Since my brother Dan and his family weren't able to come and visit over the summer due to Brynn's cancer recurrence, we decided to finally make the journey to them. According to my phone, it would take 19 hours and 1 minute to get from our house to theirs, which explains why we hadn't done the trip before. But now that the kids were older I hoped they could handle it without too much whining.
We set out the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, since the kids got early out that day. We drove and drove, and saw some windmills:
Then we drove some more. I spent most of my time sitting between whatever kids were in the back seat to provide a buffer. It wasn't the most comfortable spot in the car, but it kept things pretty low-key. Then we drove and drove.
The kids all had tablets, and we made sure they were loaded up with games and shows and everything. Dax had loaded a lot of episodes of Pokemon, and he was pretty zoned in a lot of the time. Which was okay, because a lot of Wyoming isn't too eventful. We drove and drove.
And drove. We made it all the way across the border to Nebraska the first night. We stayed in some little hotel in a town I can't remember the name of currently. But it had a room that fit us all and also a free breakfast, so it met all of our needs. First thing after breakfast, we were back in the car!
We had lots of snacks, and we brought some Wixi Stix to play with in the car too. Arden made a beautiful headpiece and some bracelets and rings. She was okay to model them for me:
We played the license plate game, drove and drove, listened to music, drove and drove, and saw a lot of cornfields while we drove and drove. The kids were sooo excited when we finally saw this sign:
We are in Missouri! Hooray! Unfortunately, St. Louis is on the other end of the state. Still like 4 or 5 more hours to go. Those were the roughest, but we finally made it on Wednesday night!
When we arrived, Brynn was comfortably settled on the couch watching TV with her parents. Drake was so happy to see us (mostly Daxton probably), and the other boys were at young mens. We talked for a while until the other boys got home, and then we talked some more and watched a little TV. We were pretty tired (which seems weird, since we hardly moved all day), but before long we were ready for bed. Kohl had given up the basement to us, which was so nice of him!
The next morning Dax and Drake took over the downstairs. They were multitasking by watching Bob Ross paint some happy little clouds while also playing on their tablets.
Lori was awesome and cooked us an amazing Thanksgiving dinner. Preston and I offered to help, but she kept shooing us away. So, we sat down and put our feet up and watched her and Dan work.
Thanksgiving Dinner (which we pretty much ate as a late lunch) was awesome! Everything was delicious, and Lori makes my favorite kind of sweet potatoes, with pecans on top. Kohl's friend Mitch (which is somehow related to me) came over and ate too. And then, of course, came pie! Brynn pretty much slept through the morning and through the meal, but Lori tells me she wasn't really eating food at their point since she always felt slightly nauseous from the chemo. Poor little Brynn!
After dinner the adults sacked out on the couch, but my kids plus Chase and Drake were having a great time running all over the place. They played several epic games of hide and seek, jumped on the trampoline a lot, and then played tag all around the house. Finally they took a break and decided to get in the hot tub:
Brynn woke up and came out during all the noise. We played a weird game about werewolves, which I didn't really understand, but it was kind of fun anyway.
After a few rounds of that game we gave up and some people played Clue for a while. Brynn settled into the recliner and we watched Pitch Perfect 2, which Preston thoroughly enjoyed. We had some more leftovers and some more pie. Cuz, thanksgiving. My, my, my, I love pie. I think that is from a movie.
We mostly just hang out and talked and played the rest of the night. After the kids were settled down, me and Dan and Lori took our turn in the hot tub for a while. It was a good Thanksgiving.
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