Hannah riding her tricycle

One good thing about hitching a uhaul trailer to the van is that we can bring the kids bikes with us. I wasn't planning on bringing Hannah's tricycle because she hadn't quite gotten the hang of using the pedals yet.  Thankfully, John piled it into the trailer along with the bikes and all of our other luggage because Hannah has figured out how to pedal during our first few days here!

A very long 3 days on the road...

We pulled out of our driveway this past Monday morning a little before 8 a.m. to begin our long drive to Pennsylvania. We thought and hoped that we could make the drive in 2 very full days, but soon realized after many stops that lasted longer than anticipated and then not even reaching our normal half-way point after the first day that we needed a third day to complete the journey. 

Looking back, I'm still trying to figure out how we could have saved time and expedited our rest stops. I guess having an additional baby in diapers, who also requires nursing and being fed baby food slowed us down a bit. The 2:1 children to parent ratio on top of that added some chaos and time. Our GPS didn't help either. There were several times when the GPS told us to go a route that was pretty far off the well beaten path, and we'd try it thinking,' well, maybe this way is faster', only to turn around and go back to the more familiar roads. That definitely took a big chunk of time out of the 2nd day's drive. Two adults and 4 children spending 2 nights in a hotel room with 2 queen size beds and a pack-n-play didn't give us a good night's sleep, so we were off to slow starts the mornings of the 2nd and 3rd days.

Compared to the first 2 days, today's drive through the beautiful state of Virginia, a small bit of West Virginia and Maryland and then the final 2+ hours of Pennsylvania went (mercifully) very smoothly and quickly. We arrived at my mom's house around 5:30 p.m. today, got the minivan and uhaul trailer unloaded, got a homecooked meal, and are already feeling settled for an extended vacation.