Whirlwind Trip

This has been a whirlwind time for us. A week ago last Monday, we set out to visit family in North Carolina. My sister Kris, brother-in-law Jim and their children (Rachel, Matthew, Mary, Rebecca, John, Deborah and Joanna). We were told to expect between 15 and 16 hours in the car, depending on stops. Dave and I decided the best thing for us to try would be waking up at 1:30 in the morning and leaving at 2:00 and driving straight through. We weren't sure how that would work but wanted to see if we could get the kids to go back to sleep in the car. So we left at 2:00, right on schedule. The first hour, everyone was awake but quiet. Leah was awesome. She stayed awake but we barely heard a peep out of her. Then after an hour she started to fuss. It took about ten minutes of her intermittent crying, for her to settle down and go to sleep. Everyone slept until around 6:30. Then we got some breakfast and had a near mishap with Lexi and car sickness-but she was fine, we got it sorted. By the time we stopped, we had traveled for 8 1/2 hours! The only reason we stopped was to get fuel. Turns out, that was the only stop we made. We traveled the last part without stopping and made the whole trip in 14 hours and 9 min. Boy were we glad to get out of that car!