ray reunion - day 7

on the road again. just can't wait to get on the road again.

i love road trips. and summer. and all the different landscapes in this amazing country. and love. ;)

taco bell, the lunch of champions. right up there in my top 5 fav fast foods. and yes, i know it's disgusting, you just can't let that stop you from enjoying the deliciousness.

taco bell brownie time!

and parking lot playground time again. oh, and by the looks of frankie, it's party in the usa time too! ;)

since grandpa had a bum knee, he only drove for a few hours each day. matt kept laney and chris with him and grandpa, and then lexi and i had the little girls.

it worked out really well. the girls had enough room between them so they couldn't touch, but they could spread out a little. and we were able to set up the laptop wedged between the seats so the girls could watch movies.

we stopped at a truck stop when what to my wondering eyes should appear, but halloween candy in august, so queer!

 ok that was lame, but really? we're not even back to school yet!

considering all the driving we've been doing, the girls were pretty good.

we had a few pouts, but overall pretty good and easy. :)

and lexi was a big help! she'd get frustrated cause we all asked for so much stuff to be handed to us, but she was pretty good. :)

we drove right through indianapolis where katie will be going on her mission, so we took this pic and sent it to her.

some day i want to stop at all the "welcome to..." signs i see in each state. i think that would be a fun series of pictures.

no, lexi! don't jump! please, for the love of all things, don't jump!!! ;) 

she turned away from me cause she was laughing too hard. we stopped for a delicious and nutritious dinner at the mcd's. it was a beautifully cool evening. all of the weather on our trip was nice and cool, very strange for august! i was seriously worried about burning up in nauvoo, it gets very hot and humid there, just like here in md, but it was great! we totally lucked out!

we stopped for the night at an economy inn near zanesville, ohio. it was such a bummer that all of the choice hotels within an hour of where we wanted to stop were booked! since laney doesn't sleep well, the drivers need to sleep well, and the teens like to stay up late and watch tv, i had talked to lexi about the kids all staying in one room, and the adults in the other. she loved the idea and we were set! it was a great help! of course, i couldn't sleep, and then lovely zanesville has the same kind of volunteer firefighter alerts that we have here in leonardtown, so that went off at 5am. only instead of the alarm going off three times, it goes off like... 20 times. seriously. here, that means a tornado is coming - it's only happened twice in the 4 years we've lived here, so when the siren kept going off, we all (the adults) got up to check the weather, and i called the front desk. but nope, just the volunteer alert signal. crazy town! after that we tried to get back to sleep, but to no avail. we were up and figured we might as well get on the road.

and our hotel was also a little strange, we had a full size fridge in our room! weird, right?!

 

onto the last day of our trip! 

and the good news is that i've got less than 250 pics left on my phone! almost caught up! ;)