The Drive

We decided to drive to Arizona in order to save money. I think it is interesting that I was 25 weeks pregnant while we made this drive because I was 25 weeks pregnant when we moved to Akron and made the drive from Utah to Ohio. We started the drive from Ithaca on Sunday (12.12.10) around 10:30am and drove the seven hours to Columbus, Ohio to spend the night with Sam's family. Sam drove that whole day. It was nice to start out with a short drive and have a place to stop and rest. We stayed up too late that night but we planned our route for the rest of the trip. The weather in Columbus was the worst out of the entire drive. It was snowing and the roads were not plowed. As soon as we crossed into Kentucky, the roads were clear.

On the second day, I drove the entire day. In Kentucky, we stopped at a grocery store to find Ale-8-One. Sam learned about this product in school and he was excited to try it. He loves it. We looked for a KFC in Kentucky and did not see a single one even though we were in Kentucky for a few hours. So we stopped for dinner in Tennessee. After that, we took a 30 minute detour to Mississippi because Sam had never been there. It was about 14 hours of driving before I pulled over in Texas to take a nap on the side of the road for one hour. Alex slept through the night (and even slept a few extra hours) in his carseat. Sam took over and drove for one hour and then we were back on the side of the road in Texas where we slept for one more hour.

After our two hours of sleeping, I started driving again. I drove from the middle of Texas to our final destination. We got to Mesa around 5:30pm Arizona time. The last hour was pretty miserable and Alex was ready to get out but we weren't going to stop until we got to Mesa!

Alex was the best of all of us on this trip. I was tired, Sam was tired, and Alex was happy and playing in his carseat. When we would let him out of his carseat, he would dance and sprint all over the place but then we would put him back in and he would just deal with it. We did not have any music or movies playing. I forgot to bring him books and I only had one little toy car for him. He was telling us stories the whole time and it was so fun to play with him. He would fall asleep at his normal nap time and bed time. It was incredible. We only bought food twice and the other meals were things I had brought from home. I was so glad we were able to make it without getting a hotel. I am pretty cheap.

You may not be able to tell who is growling, but Alex now makes this hilarious sound. It cracks us up.