Happy New Year’s everyone. We are fresh off a traveling marathon and trying to adjust back to reality after the chaos that was the Christmas break. Here was our schedule for the past two weeks (driving time in parentheses):
Fri, Dec 22 – Drive to Onida to Becky’s parents (5 hrs)
Sat, Dec 23 – In Onida
Sun, Dec 24 – Drive back home from Onida (5 hrs)
Mon, Dec 25 – Drive to Fergus to my parents (45 min)
Tue, Dec 26 – Drive back home (45 min)
Wed, Dec 27 – Work, pretend to have a normal day
Thu, Dec 28 – Drive to my brother’s house in the Twin Cities (3 hrs), plus a trip to the zoo & back (45 min)
Fri, Dec 29 – Drive to my youngest brothers house, then to Sioux Falls, then to Becky’s sisters near Marion, SD (7 hrs)
Sat, Dec 30 – Drive to Chamberlain, SD in terrible road conditions. We passed 7 cars in the ditch during our drive (2.5 hrs)
Sun, Dec 31 – After Becky’s cousin Nate’s wedding, we headed back home in relatively bad driving conditions (6.5 hrs)
Mon, Jan 1 – Drive to our friends Brad & Kari’s in Fergus for our friends Christmas party (1 hr)
All told that comes out to over 32 hrs of driving in about 10 days. Needless to say, Amelia is very tired of the car, and her car seat in particular. Katie traveled very well overall; my brother gave us a portable DVD player for Christmas and between that and coloring, she stayed fairly busy in the car.
Interesting quotes/happenings from the long journey:
* When we went to the Como Zoo in St. Paul on Thursday we saw some monkeys. One of the monkeys decided to eat another’s poop during the 2 minutes we watched. Katie was fascinated by this and she continues to mention to everyone new.
* Katie was a big hit at the dance for Becky’s cousins wedding. Every time someone asks her to shake her booty, she turns around and gives them a show. She and her cousin Noah had fun dancing at the wedding. It was funny because Noah (6 months older) usually leads Katie around when they’re playing, but on the dance floor they hold hands and follow Katie’s lead.
* Nate and his wife put playing cards out on the reception tables with their names on it. That was a cool idea, and we should’ve done that for our wedding.
* The wedding reception was held at a place in Oacoma, SD called Cedar Shores right on the shore of the Missouri river. It was a really nice hotel – with the weather as bad as it was, once we got there we decided if we were going to be stranded, it may as well be at a place as nice as that.
All in all we had fun on the trip, but the driving was a little intense. I’m sure in two weeks we’ll look back and say we had a really fun time – once we get a chance to forget all the driving.
Eric's space 