Wisconsin 2016

We've been traveling out to Wisconsin the past few summers since Ellie was born to make sure that she gets to know our far away family. This year, Micah and I decided to take a shot at driving...20 hours...with a 2-year-old and a 10-month-old. Were we crazy? A little bit, but I've done worse things. I did have major anxiety working up to it. Any kind of trip with kids though, right?

On the way out there we decided to break it into 2 trips of about 10 hours each. The first day went pretty well. We made our planned stops and made it to our hotel by 6 p.m. We were starved so we ran over to Qdoba for dinner. Little did we know that there would be an insane tornado warning and we would be stuck in the restaurant for almost 2 hours! Our hotel was literally across the street, but we waited it out and all was well. We ended the evening with some swimming and turned in early. Micah was such a good sport and helped so much with the kids. 

The next day was also uneventful. We stopped at Tasty Tacos in Des Moines and went right to A&W the second we pulled into town. It was fun catching up with Micah and listening to music. When we needed a break we would each guess the age and gender of the person driving in the car coming up in the lane next to us. If you've never played, I highly recommend it.

The kids were so happy to be out of the car! We stayed with my Aunt Kathy, in her beautiful old house. We love staying there and spending time with them, Ellie loves the toys. My dad also stayed there and it's alway a bonus anytime we get to spend some extra time with him. We spent our few days there visiting with my Grandma. This was the first time that we went since my Grandpa had passed away. He is so missed. We also were able to attend my beautiful cousin Jena's wedding. Ellie had a blast dancing the night away and I loved seeing everyone. Ellie was enamored with Jena's wedding dress. She was convinced she was a real live princess and couldn't take her eyes off of her. 

For our drive home, Micah and I decided last minute to make the drive in one trip. Of course, we didn't decide to leave until 5 p.m. I was hopeful because I knew there was a good chance the kids would sleep most of the way, but I was mostly nervous about driving all night. I have never done that before. So we packed up and headed out. Micah drove until about 1:30 and then I took the reigns and drove us all the way home. We walked in our door at 11:34 and I don't think I've ever been so tired in my life. As predicted, the kids were amazing. Fitz literally slept the whole way home and I learned that I cannot listen to podcasts at 3:30 a.m. Only music that I can sing to. Anyway, we loved being able to see our Wisconsin family. It's never long or often enough. We're keeping our fingers crossed to see everyone next summer!