Ohio Road Trip - Day 1

We flew both times we visited Ohio after the boys were born. Plus my mom and I flew with them to Minnesota to visit my grandma in October. As we progressed through the three trips, each was more and more difficult. I spent the majority of our last flight bouncing Reid on my hip at the front of the airplane trying to get him to stop crying. It was made even worse when I would glance back to Eric in desperation and see Aiden sound asleep. One sleeping baby is better than none, so I kept on trying to calm Reid.

So, this summer we decided we would take a road trip to visit Eric's family in Ohio. The following posts will document our road tripping adventures. It took us nine days to travel 2594.7 miles through Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, and back home to Colorado.

All in all, it went pretty well.



Day 1

Aiden reading a book as we say goodbye to our house. We had the back seat folded down into the floor. Love having a minivan! We put a big tub of toys and books behind the passenger seat for the non-driving's access when trying to entertain the boys. Behind the driver's seat we had another big tub with snacks and medical supplies. Behind the boys we had two Pack n Plays, three suitcases, a cooler, their two cruisers, a box of diapers, and few other random bags of supplies. It was so convenient to be able to bring so much with us.
Reid settling in for a good thumb-sucking.
Eric took the first leg of the trip. We left our house about 7:30 a.m.
Me.
Our first destination was my Aunt Marita and Uncle Gene's farm in Iowa.


Aiden.

Reid.
Aiden fell asleep during the first leg, as expected. You might notice that he has a fat upper lip. He was throwing a bit of a fit while Eric and I were trying to load the van and he was wanting to be held. I think he may have hit his lip on the floor. Of course I didn't notice the bloody fat lip until he fell asleep and was in this position. Ouch.
Reid, still awake.

Our first stop was at the rest area in Sterling in the southeast corner of Colorado. Along the lines of small world, I saw the band teacher from school as he and his family were heading to a Michigan cabin for a couple of weeks.




Back in the van, Aiden was trying to negotiate standing during the next leg.
I took my turn at driving.
Reid finally fell asleep, much to our relief. I was a little worried that we were going to discover he couldn't sleep in a car.
Hello, Nebraska.
The fish-eye mirror in our van. Good for keeping tabs on the backseat passengers.
The Great Platte River Road Archway. One of the only exciting things about driving through Nebraska. (Omaha is also always a sight for sore eyes. Although, this time with all of the river flooding, I wasn't sure we would actually get across the Missouri River into Iowa. We were detoured all through Omaha before we finally were given access to head east.)

On Saturday evening, we met up with my friend Amanda from Iowa State. She was nice enough to drive an hour up to an exit along I-80 so we could meet up with her. It was too short of a visit, but I'm so glad we had a chance to catch up. We finally made it to the farm around 10:30/11:00 p.m. It was a loooong first day, but the boys did pretty well considering what we put them through. 738 miles down.