We made it to my parents' and it has been fun so far. The road trip portion wasn't nearly as bad as I had worried it might be. It took us 3 days to get to NY and we left each morning between 10 and 12 (12pm, 11am, 10am or so). We drove about 6 - 6 1/2 hours each day with a nice stop for lunch in the middle (usually about an hour to an hour and a half). We ate at Chik-Fil-A 4 times during our trip, which made John very happy. They boys really liked it too! They had chicken nuggets, fruit, and apple juice. They also had these disposable place mats that stuck to the table for kids, they were great! Both hotels we stayed at were very nice too.
The first day went really well. The boys handled the drive well and all the changes to their routine. We stopped in Des Moines for lunch and the mall there is fantastic. They have a huge rest area in the food court with several rooms for families to use along with couches and a children's area. They had a couple family rest rooms with kid size things, a baby changing room, and a nursing mother's room. Dinner was a little of a disappointment though. We stopped at Steak & Shake (which John loves but they don't have any near us) and sadly the food was not very good. I guess they were having a training night and most of the kitchen staff were training. It took forever to get our food; by the time it came Oliver was a pretty big fussy-pants. When we finally got our food it wasn't too tasty, mine was wrong, and I never got my french fries. The poor waitress was really nice though and very apologetic; from what we could tell it was like that for the rest of the people in the restaurant. When we went to pay the manager was very nice and gave us our meal for free, hopefully when we swing back through on our way home it will be better. We ended up going across the street to Chik-Fil-A for some nuggets and lemonade (man is it good!) on our way back to the hotel.
Day 2 went well also. Lunch went well again, they had a play area for kids at that one. It was great, we let the boys run (well toddle) around for awhile before we got back in the car. Oliver was just big enough to climb up into the big kids area. So I followed him up and took him down the slide, which he loved! Then I took Owynn up so he could go down the slide too; he thought it was great also. Oliver started getting a little fussy about a half an hour from our hotel, but he stayed fairly happy until we got there with some toys I gave him. We were pretty worn out by the time we got there and it was late, due in part to the time zone change. We ended up getting subs from this tiny little place across the street from the hotel and they were fantastic! I haven't had a sub that yummy in a long time! We got the boys a little sub to split and they even liked theirs.
Day 3 I was pretty anxious to get going since we were getting to my parents' that night. The morning for me was pretty gross. About an hour before we were supposed to get to our lunch stop my motion sickness hit me. I had been taking medication to prevent it non stop our whole drive, I don't know what I did differently but I was feeling pretty awful by the time we stopped. I managed to eat some lunch and we took an extra long stop until I finally felt better. I got a surprisingly yummy chicken caesar wrap at Chik-Fil-A. I took some more medication before we left and I didn't have any problems at all during the rest of our drive. It was very odd. Oliver got fussy again about half an hour or so before we got here, but again toys helped him. Owynn was great and didn't make a fussy peep the whole drive.
We got here around 7pm and surprisingly beat both my parents home from work. Sammy and Jeff were here though to greet us. It's been a nice and relaxing visit so far. The boys have been sleeping great too, even though we are all sharing a room. They have also been napping great too, so far today they've been asleep for almost 3 hours now. Easter was a lot of fun too! The Easter Bunny was great to everyone. The boys, especially Oliver, have been thrilled with all the animals here (3 cats and 3 dogs).
Happy Easter and Passover!
