2,824
that is the number of miles I drove by myself with my five children over the Christmas vacation. Anyone jealous?
As absolutely crazy as it was, I broke it up into 3rds, stopping at friends houses all along the way. That's the great thing about the military, we've got friends all along the E. coast now! We'll never need to get another hotel again. Aside from the first two days (snow and rain, each day taking almost twice as long as it should!!!), the driving was really not too bad...clear roads, lots of peeing on the side of the road. I had prepared presents for every few hours to keep the kids happy, and it worked pretty well. Although, we used most of them on the trip down....
After we hit Columbia, SC w/my good friend from Japan, Christy, she lent me her GPS, which I fell in love with. Works SOO much better than scrambling for that mapquest printed paper, turning on a light to read it, etc.... So after returning it on the way back, we stopped at Walmart and bought one to take us the rest of the way home. Her name is Ruth.
So I don't have a ton of great pics from the trip, I had brought my video camera take footage for Adam, but figured trying to keep track of that and 5 kids at disney would be enough...but I bummed some pics off my family, and I'll post more as I get them in from them...
I'm ALL about kids on leashes!!!!! All I can say is: I made Jake and Luke wear them almost the entire time at Disney, and I came home with ALL FIVE KIDS! You can't ask for more than that from a product...

above: my brother, Will, w/Jake on leash

Sarah sporting her new crown on It's a Small World.

Me savoring every bite of my smoked turkey leg while enjoying the view.

A little wet from the rapids ride at Animal Kingdom. My girls requested "just a girls picture" w/their cousins Addie and Sammie.

Luke, just plain tuckered out. He picked out this Squirt stuffed animal for his souvenier, and still sleeps w/it every night.

Jake and one his trip souveniers, his sunglasses, which he wore faithfully and we actually came home w/too! I was amazed.

The top of the Daytona 500 bleachers. I didn't want to pay for the tour package, so we hiked to the top of the bleachers instead=free!

We had a fabulous time w/my family. I am ALL ABOUT family time, and will go to great legnths to make it happen. When the drive was at it's "peaks moments", I just kept reminding myself that soon I'd be relaxing in front of a pool, hanging w/my family.

Disney was crazy being the holidays, but by about the 3rd day we finally got it figured out.... Oh well, if we ever go again, I would be a pro.

I am just amazed that people actually live there in that fabulous 70 degree winter weather. I hope it's incredibly hot and miserable in the summer, because it just didn't seem fair. Now we are back to our lovely New England winter weather....we had an ice storm last week, then a snow storm last night w/a layer of ice on top of the snow, and more snow forcasted for Tues and Thurs this week. So lots of fun ahead. This morning's was so bad that even church was cancelled. We were all so sad, we had to go sledding to lift our spirits a little...

Adam finally has a return date, first week of March. About 2 weeks later than I'd been hoping for/counting down to, but they first told him the end of March, so I'll take first. I'm just trying to keep my spirits up....vaca's over, freezing weather, and still 8 wks to go.....kind of hitting a wall, but trying to push through....I did get the Christmas decorations put away today, so feeling really good about myself for that!!

Thank you to all of my family for so much help on the trip!!! Especially my Dad and Kim, they were awesome. Thank you!