The Drive

Yesterday I drove from IL to NC with the kids.  It took us 16.5 hours.  That is a looooong drive, I was so ready to be in the hotel by then.  But the kids were amazing.  Truly amazing.  I had no fighting, no arguing, no screaming, no asking a million times if we were there.  I seriously think Drew only asked me maybe 10 times if we were there or how far away we were, and that's well under once an hour so that's awesome.  Kara freaked out a little bit when our DVD player broke in the middle of the movie she picked out but that was over in about 5 minutes and then she went on to something else.  I was so proud of my kids.  Drew was even helpful when Kara would drop things out of her reach.  He was so helpful.
I planned to leave between 6 and 7am and I left at 6:30, perfect.  I stopped about every 4 hours at fast food places that have play areas and let the kids run off energy.  In between stops I gave the kids lunch bags full of goodies.  I had plastic bracelets, lacing beads, stickers, rubber ducks, crackers, hershey kisses, and a few other little trinkets and treats.  I tried to limit the amount of junk the kids had and the fun tiny toys kept them from saying they were hungry.
Drew told me he was going to leave all his grumpies in Illinois and I think he did!  He enjoyed the drive and it was fun to talk to him on this trip.  At one point he became very concerned that we took the weather and everyone back in IL wasn't going to have any weather.  I assured him that weather would continue without him.  When we drove through Kentucky he asked me why they had mountains of trees and where those big rocks came from.  Kentucky is so pretty, we saw so many beautiful horse farms.  In Tennessee we approached some mountains and Drew said 'Hey, those mountains look pretty smokey"  I started laughing out loud.  Well kid, those are the smokey mountains.  Then he was concerned that someone would just let the mountains smoke like that without putting them out, they could burn up all the trees.  He's so cute.  He did get a little mad at me that I wouldn't stop and explore the mountains with him.  But I assured him that we would come back as a family and explore the mountains.  It's a very drivable distance for a night away sometime.  Just about when we got to NC Drew asked if we were headed back home because it was taking so long.
Kara doesn't talk a lot so I don't have much from her but she made me cry.  She was looking at a picture book that my friend made us.  It has pictures of our old hometown, my kids and of her and her family.  It's such a beautiful gift and my kids love it.  Well Kara was looking at the pictures saying Amy, more Amy.  Then she closed the book and said bye bye home, no more Amy.  It makes me cry just thinking about it now.
Oh I forgot the 'best' part.  About 4 or 5 hours into the drive Drew tells me there's a spider in the car.  I don't know if I can believe him or not, so I say it's probably just a little fly, where is it I ask.  Drew says above my head and sure enough there's a grapefruit size spider (dime size) with large fangs (no fangs) swaying above my head trying to eat me (terrified that he's been stuck in the car with us for 4 or 5 hours).  I swat at it and it flies to the passenger side of the car.  There isn't really anything I can do, so I just keep driving and every stray hair or breeze I feel on my I assume is the spider and freak out a bit.  A couple hours later Drew says the spider is back behind his head and I give him a tissue and calmly ask him to smoosh him (squeal like a baby to please kill that spider dead!).  Drew says he does but who knows.  In my head that spider is gone but I know one of these days I'll be driving down the road and Bam!  He'll just drop down right in front of my face, and it's probably a girl and she had babies in my car overnight.
Now today and tomorrow we are at the hotel and then Monday we close on our house.  I can't even believe it!  My new house.