Road Trip

Jackson and I took our first road trip on Memorial Day weekend. My cousin, Chad, had a high school graduation party in Omaha and it was the perfect opportunity to see a whole lot of family in one trip. Drew stayed behind with Ruby so little man and I were on our own.

I should have taken a picture of the trunk. A 3 day trip with me and a 5 1/2 month old and the trunk was full. Jack sure does require a lot of stuff! (Although, I will say the stroller took up at least half of it.)

The drive there was pretty smooth. I timed it perfectly and Jack slept the first 2 1/2 hours. The last 30 minutes wasn't so fun. We were in 2 lane road construction, it was raining and Jack was screaming. He'd had enough of the car set. Pulling over wasn't such a good option (in the rain and road construction), but we were close enough that we just forged ahead.

It was a lovely weekend. We saw almost all of the Diers side (my Mom's) of the family. The weather was perfect for the outdoor graduation party (at Aunt Lori's incredible new outdoor kitchen/patio/bar) and the food was fabulous. I loved seeing all of my aunts (missed you Carol!), uncles and cousins - Mom has 4 sisters so there are a lot of them! It was so cool to introduce Jackson to everyone as well. I wish we could get together more often. (Click here for my pictures of the weekend.)

Everyone left Omaha Sunday morning except my immediate family who stayed an extra day for some Jack time. I think they enjoyed it.

We really didn't do much, but it was nice to be together. We took a trip to Big Fred's, a family favorite back when we lived in Blair.

And we accidentally discovered the worlds largest hot fudge sundae.

As always, it was hard for us to say goodbye.

Jackson & I tried the same strategy for the drive home. Leave super early so he will sleep the bulk of it. Not so lucky this time. He had an absolute meltdown about an hour into the trip. Naturally, we were in the middle of nowhere, so I drove for 25 minutes until arriving in Mound City where there was a suitable place to stop. We hung out at the McDonald's for about 30 minutes for a diaper change, bottle and some play time. We no more than pulled out of the parking lot when Jack started screaming again. Fortunately, it only lasted about 5 minutes and he had cried himself to sleep. He woke up just after we passed through Kansas City and wasn't too thrilled about the last 20 minutes of the drive. But we made it fairly unscathed - just under 4 hours later instead of 3.

Drew was pretty excited to see us. I'm sure he enjoyed the peace and quiet. Not to mention the 36 holes of golf he played each day we were gone. But as he said, it was almost an eerie silence. Jack was happy to see him, too.

So we survived our first road trip. And I learned something about my son. He's always liked car rides and almost every time you buckle him in his car seat he's sound asleep within minutes. Trips around Lawrence, or even to Kansas City, are fairly quick so most of the time he's still sleeping when we get home. What I didn't know is that if he wakes up while still in the car....he's not such a fan. Should make for an interesting drive to Denver this summer. 8 hours. Yikes.