Long Drive

When we orignally were planning on meeting up in Wisconsin for the family reunion we had no doubt that we were going to drive. First off, because it's way cheaper and secondly, I think the drive out there is half the fun and an adventure! I had a few people give my weird looks when I told them we were driving out to Wisconsin, especially with Vince being 3 1/2 and Jake wasnt even 2 yet! I have to admit I was a little nervous on how the boys would do, but in all honesty they did pretty good. They generally do well in the car in the first place but driving 12 hours a day is a different story. We broke the trip up and made plenty of stops. There were points where Jake was crying and wanting to get out but we had to keep going and push through. We brought lots of toys and had snacks on hand and a ipad with movies on it. I actually had gotten a free little DVD player for the trip and we were excited and brought all these different movies. Well about 2 hours into the trip I got it out and I found out why it was free. It didnt work. We did have 2 movies on our ipad: Fox and the Hound and Cars. I can tell you I pretty much have Cars memorized now but how many times we replayed it! It also helped because we camped. We usually got into our campsite late around 8 or so, then got to bed at 10 because it was the middle of summer and still light out til then.  Then we were up at 6:30 or 7 when the sun woke us up. This then led to them taking naps in the car. Those were the points of no return when it came to stops. We made sure we were full on gas and just drove! You better have just emptied your bladder because we werent stopping for nothing when they were asleep! haha. We always tried to stop at parks when we would stop for our lunches so they could get some energy out. They did awesome! I was really proud of them.

After traveling for 4 days we made it to Nauvoo, IL! Nauvoo isnt exactly on the way to Wisconsin but we wanted to stop there to see the wonderful LDS historic sites and we got to meet up with Ryan's sister and her family!