To Grandmother's House We Go!

We made it home from our one and only drive to Washington this year. (My 17th in the nearly 6 years I've lived in Utah, which also happens to be more miles if I'd driven around the earth's equator.) It was long and fun and we're glad to be home. We had a good start out. We picked up Devan from school 8:30 pm and set out from there. I was feeling so productive because I'd gotten all the cleaning and most of the packing and loading of the car done all by myself. We had a plan to drive straight through the night and arrive at our friends' Heather and Ryan's house midday on Thursday and then go camping with them on the beach in Oregon.  Everything went great until around midnight. I was driving through Idaho and I could feel we'd gotten a flat tire. I pulled over and the tire had practically exploded!

Luckily we were only a few miles away from Twin Falls where we were able to get a motel room. Devan went out the next morning to replace the tire and we entertained ourselves at the hotel. Since we weren't going to make it to Oregon until 12 hours later than planned, we had to call Heather and cancel and make plans to meet up with them in Washington instead. I was so afraid that Hannah was going to be heartbroken when I told her we weren't going camping. I let her eat some of the treats we'd been saving for the beach for breakfast and she said, "Are we camping now? Is this hotel camping?" I told her it was, and she was content.

At around 10:00 in the morning we set out again, $700 poorer, but 4 tires richer. It took us about 12 more hours to get to Washington since our plan to drive while the kids slept had been ruined and they don' t love spending the whole day in the car. On the trip home at the end of the week we were able to drive overnight and we made it home in only 13 hours. So much more pleasant.

We passed snacks back to the kids all day, but by dinnertime we were still a few hours from our destination so we stopped at a little drive-in in Eastern Washington. The food wasn't great and it was overpriced, but it was so nice to get out and play for a while.

Ben ate his first corndog