Last week, all four of us packed into the car and drove to North Carolina. That’s about a 10 hour trip with no stops. All in all, we made the trip in about 13 hours or so. That’s pretty good, I think.<\/p>\n
Ever since Chris and Toni moved south a couple years back, they’ve been inviting us to come down to see their new digs and visit. With the whole pregnancy-thing blossoming into the newborn and then baby-things, it was tough to find a good time to travel. We finally bit the bullet and made the decision to go.[readmore]<\/p>\n
We left at 10am on Thursday, May 16th planning to get to the Richmond, VA area that afternoon and meet one of Robyn’s Twins Mom internet message board friends and her family for dinner. Right from the start things seemed to go well. The new portable DVD player that we had purchased was keeping the kids entertained and relatively quiet and the recently arrived [amazon=B000NVZE5M]GPS unit[\/amazon] was taking us on an unexpected, but more direct and definitely faster, route. Our first stop came after about 4 hours or so and landed us at a McDonald’s in Havre De Grace, MD. We stopped, stretched our legs, hit the bathrooms (I couldn’t hold the coffee that I had had that morning any longer, so this stop was mainly for me!) and got something to eat before getting back on the road. I believe we got as far as south D.C before making a quick stop to call Robyn’s friend and let her know where we were and give her our estimated arrival time. Then it was back in the car and through the thickening traffic until we made our last stop just outside of Richmond in order to get gas and let the kids cool down. We arrived at our very nice hotel in Chester, VA at about 5pm. Since we were going to meet Angie and her family for dinner, we didn’t have time to do anything but get our stuff into the room, change the kids’ diapers and tidy up a bit before heading back out.<\/p>\n
It was nice to have dinner with Angie, her husband and kids. Although we had never met in person, there was the shared experience of having boy\/girl twins and all that goes along with it. Her kids were certainly the most polite three year olds I’d ever met, saying lots of “pleases”, “sirs” and “ma’ams” throughout the meal. Chloe was keeping me on my toes and it really wasn’t until the very end of dinner that I got a chance to shove my meal into my face.<\/p>\n
The hotel stay (which was one of the things that was worrying me most about the whole trip) went really well. Chloe and Gabriel were really wound up, so they didn’t get to sleep until about 11pm. But once they were out, they slept soundly through the night until almost 8am the next day. We couldn’t have been more happy and impressed with our kids.<\/p>\n
After a quick breakfast, it was time to pack the car and get back on the road. Unfortunately, Friday did not go quite as well as the day before. The kids were just sick of being in the car and watching the same Elmo DVD over and over again (we had others, but they didn’t want anything to do with a non-Elmo DVD!) so we made several stops throughout the day. Our arrival time at Chris and Toni’s was about 3pm on Friday. A little later than expected, but not too bad.<\/p>\n
[b]Lessons Learned[\/b]
\n[list]
\n[*]GPS is a MUST-HAVE for long trips to unknown areas with children
\n[*]GPS will get you where you want to go. It’s like The Force – trust it even if it seems to be taking you in the wrong direction!
\n[*]In-car DVD player is a MUST-HAVE for long trips with children
\n[*]Always have more than one Elmo DVD for long trips with children
\n[*]Don’t drink a large Dunkin’ Donuts coffee before leaving on a long trip with children
\n[*]Chloe and Gabriel will sleep anywhere
\n[\/list]
\n[\/readmore]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Last week, all four of us packed into the car and drove to North Carolina. That’s about a 10 hour trip with no stops. All in all, we made the trip in about 13 hours or so. That’s pretty good, … Continue reading