NORTHEAST TOUR PART ONE: 18 hours....

We left for our 16 day visit to the northeast on Saturday the 1st.  We packed the car up the night before and planned to leave at 5am central time.  Our plan was to transport the kids into the car under the cover of darkness and have them fall back to sleep and get as far as I could with them sleeping.  Well, it didn't really work out that way!   As soon as the kids got in the car they were so excited!  Caeley kept saying "We're going to do it!"  "Go dad!"  and Elijah would second anything Caeley said.  At first I was a little worried that they were awake so early, but it was fun hearing how excited they were, and watching the sun come up as we headed out of Nashville. 

We had been on the road for about 3 hours when Elijah, out of nowhere, threw up all over himself!  Needless to say he was a little freaked out, and we had to stop on the side of the road to change clothes and clean up.  It was a freaky isolated thing, he wasn't sick or whiney or anything, so we pressed onward.....  

Until we got pulled over in Virginia.  Note to self:  TN is 70 all the way until you cross over into VA.  As I was pulling over with the lights following in my rear view, I was hoping that once the officer walked up and saw the kids in the back and heard how I was traveling to CT clearly on my own, that he might give me a break.  I was as nice as could be and as the officer went back to his car, Cales asked, "Are we going to jail?".  I told her no and very quickly the officer started approaching the car again.  I thought that he clearly was going to show me some mercy and give me a warning until he started with "Ok, it's 5 dollars for every mile you were over.."  

After that we really had a great trip.  The kids were troopers.  We stopped about 4 or 5 times for very short spurts of running around and playing tag, racing each other on the grass in between bathroom breaks, soda stops and refueling.  During this very long excursion we had some great talks.  About nothing really, but Caeley is really getting to an age where she just wants to talk about everything and anything and I love it.  

Things went really really well until the very end of the trip.  It did take us 18 hours, and at the end, Elijah was totally done.  He doesn't sleep well in the car and he was clearly wanting out of the car.  So the last hour was peppered with crying and whining, but after everything they had been through, if that was all they gave me, I was very happy to deal with it.  They were amazing!  

Finally we pulled into my in laws at 12:30am.  This was the first time we had been to their newly built home!  And it was amazing!  What a very welcoming and cozy place to stop after a very, very long day......