The trip by car is approx. 13 hours, this includes a stop or two for gas, bathroom and a meal in a sit-down restaurant. I was opting to do the drive straight-thru the night. My hope is the kids will sleep a good amount of the time and we could enjoy a peaceful drive. Jeff, never having done a drive this long with the kids before, was instantly a little freaked out by the distance we'd need to cover. He wanted to split the drive over the course of 2 days and spend the night somewhere in the middle. Furthermore, Jeff's plan was to find somewhere kid-friendly to spend the remainder of day 1 and let the kids play at Chuck E Cheese, Bounce House, or somewhere similar to let the kids get their excess energy out. Oy!
Jeff takes time to warm up to an idea. Soon his idea of doing the drive to FL over two days changed to "Let's start the drive at 5:00am on Saturday morning and drive straight-thru". However, just one day prior to us leaving, Jeff comes to the conclusion he is ok with driving at night. We can leave around 7:30pm and get to Orlando by 8:30am the next morning. We'll get the kids in their pajamas, bring pillows and blankets and hope the kids sleep in the car. Sounds good to me!
The plan worked for the most part. One big exception; Jeff was tired and couldn't stay awake. Ironically, before leaving on our trip, Jeff was really concerned that I wouldn't be help at all with the driving. He thought I would be too beat from my day. I guess one of us was, but it wasn't me.
From 8:00pm to 1:30am I drove and got us to South of the Border. We stopped to get gas, Jeff and I needed to go to the bathroom and we switched drivers. From 1:30am to 3:30am, Jeff drove. I could tell he was struggling with staying awake and pleaded with him to let me get back behind the wheel. From 3:30am to 6:00am I drove again. At 6:00am, once Jeff woke up from his very long nap and it was daylight, he was ready to go again and drove for the next hour. Our plan was to keep going until Sam woke up and then stop for breakfast. At 7:00am, Sam woke-up and we went to the nearest Denny's. The kids changed into regular clothes in the car and a hot breakfast was very much desired by all of us.
Jeff finished the drive (only 1.5 hours to go) to my dad and Rita's house. We started the drive at 8:00pm and at 9:10am, we pulled into their driveway. Yay!
Ian was a road warrior! He fell asleep at 10:00pm, woke up at 1:30am. He fell back asleep at 2:15am, woke up at 4:00am and was awake the rest of the trip. He never asked for a single thing (no snacks and never needed to go to the bathroom). He was happy reading on his iPad and letting the miles pass us by.
Sam had many issues. At first she couldn't get comfortable. No matter what we did with the pillow, she wasn't happy. It took her quite a bit of time to fall asleep. She was asleep from 10:30pm to 1:30am. At 3:00am, she was awake for a good stretch of time and asked for a Fiber One bar to eat. She then started whining she needed to adjust her pull-up (we convinced her it was important to put one on in the car). She fell asleep at 4:00am still whining and slept till 7:00am. As soon as she was awake she picked up where she left off and yelled at us, "I TOLD YOU I HAVE TO ADJUST MY PULL-UP!!!". This was all needed to know it was time to stop for breakfast.
At one point when the whining was in full bloom from Sam, Jeff declared for the drive home we will do it in 2 days. He was a not happy camper. I am not sure where he stands on this new plan. I am leaving the decision up to him. We have plenty of time and don't need to rush back home. But if it was up to me, there is nothing like doing it at night and getting it over with.
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| Jeff was convinced if I took out my camera everyone would wake-up when the flash went off. Ha! |
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| If I have a camera and stuck in a car for 12 hours, you better believe I am going to use it. |
It didn't matter that all passengers had a pillow to use. They ended up not using them. :)
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