Monthly Archives: December 2012

By the numbers we drove 2706 miles, went through seven states, visited 2 aquariums, and took 4 trips to the zoo. The seven states we visited were Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, & Florida! The two aquariums were the South Carolina Aquarium and Gulfarium Marine Park. The visits to the zoo included the Rainforest Discovery Adventure Zoo, Montgomery Zoo, and the Gulf Breeze Zoo twice!

Approximate route for December 2012 vacation!

Here is a brief recap of everything we did on our December 2012 vacation!

Day 1: Headed to Aunt Becky’s
Day 2: Cave-in-Rock and fun in Hendersonville
Day 3: Headed to Pigeon Forge
Day 4: Pigeon Forge
Day 5: Headed to Charleston
Day 6: Charleston
Day 7: Savannah and across Georgia to Montgomery, AL
Day 8: Headed to Destin
Day 9: Relaxing (ducks and ocean walk)
Day 10: Gulf Breeze Zoo and Fudpuckers
Day 11: Christmas Eve
Day 12: Christmas
Day 13: Gulfarium Marine Park
Day 14: Reagan’s First Birthday!!
Day 15: Long day of driving
Day 16: Home!

A couple simple, but fun memories from this vacation include every time we’d get into an elevator we would point out the floor number to Reagan and then count up (or down) as the number changed. Most of the time one of us would count in English and one of us would count in Spanish. Reagan grew to really enjoy this ritual and would point at the number as soon as we would get on an elevator! Another fun memory is Reagan eating more of the animal food from the Gulf Breeze Zoo than she would normally eat regular food! Reagan likes real food, but she really really liked the animal food and was popping it into her mouth like candy!

Overall it was a fun vacation and Reagan seemed to have a really good time!

Saturday James woke up around 5am and couldn’t get back to sleep because he was worried about the weather and our drive home. After checking online he woke me up (not really, but I was fine pretending to sleep) and asked how I felt about getting up and going. The bed was warm and cozy, but I grudgingly got up and ready and packed. Between the two of us, we got Reagan changed and her clothes on without waking her up, and loaded the car and the sleeping baby. By some miracle we were back on the road a little before 6:45am.

The roads were clear, Reagan was doing good, and James was making great time. We’d already gone about 2 hours when James asked if I wanted to stop in Marion, IL for breakfast and to change Reagan. I thought about it and said no because it was just starting to snow, we were good on gas, and Reagan was content. Then, literally like 2 minutes later, Reagan proceeded to puke all over herself and me (I was in the back keeping her entertained).  James then looked back at me through the review mirror and with a completely straight face asked if I *now* wanted to stop in Marion. Smartass. We pulled over in Marion at a Hardees to assess the situation.

Both Reagan I were covered top and bottom in puke. The only positives were that she hadn’t had anything other than breast milk so far that morning, so the smell and consistency wasn’t too bad and that Reagan didn’t seem to be feeling bad. I still wasn’t sure what to do though because we were really covered. James had the presence of mind to remember that his brother-in-laws parents live in Marion and that they are family and might let us come over and get cleaned up. After a little calling around we got in touch with them, but they had things to take care of and wouldn’t be able to have us over for another 30 minutes. We went ahead and planned to go to their house in a little bit and I bit the bullet and tried to get us cleaned up. The bathroom in Hardees didn’t have a changing table, so I stripped Reagan out of her clothes and handed James a naked baby, wet-wipes, clean diaper, and a change of clothes. I then went back to the bathroom to change clothes and try and get cleaned up. Overall it wasn’t perfect, but at least we were out of our pukey clothes.

We then went to visit Jolene and Benny (James’ brother-in-laws parents) for a little bit.  They were very gracious hosts, especially given that we invited ourselves over at the last minute! We had a nice time chatting and getting to see their new house (they just moved back to Illinois from Alabama in the last year). Reagan also had a good time blowing them kisses, playing with the toys, and looking at all their pretty things! We were only there for about an hour, but it was a nice chance to see them and to let Reagan move around!

Once we left we were hopeful, since we had already filled up with gas and were only three hours from home, that our next stop would be home! Ha, not more than 5-10 minutes back on the road from Jolene and Benny’s and James sniffed the air asked if Reagan had pooped. I sniffed a little closer to the potential source and yep, Reagan had definitely pooped. Thus we had to pull over at the next exit to clean up a very very poopy diaper. And no, apparently she couldn’t have done that before we got back in the car!

Finally we got back on the road, Reagan fell asleep, and we went back to making pretty good time. It was still snowing pretty good, but thankfully the roads were clear and the further north we got the less snow there was on the ground.

Reagan finally asleep after her morning adventures!

We briefly stopped at County Market in Pana for a few groceries, but otherwise, it was straight home! Well… kind of straight home. Being that Reagan is a whole year old now we thought she might like to try her hand at driving…

**Side note: For those of you possibly worried about Reagan driving, she didn’t get in the front seat with James until we were on the half mile private lane to our house. So basically she was driving in our driveway, it’s just that our driveway is a little bit longer than most people’s!**

We got home a little after 2pm and it felt wonderful to be home!! After being gone so long I was worried that Reagan might not completely remember home, but as soon as we walked in the door she started pointing at her favorite things and wanted down to play! James got the car unloaded while I started unpacking just so I could pack again.  Why pack again? Because tomorrow we are leaving for Kewanee for two days. My brother and his wife and 2 month old son are visiting and this is our only chance to see them before they go back to Wyoming. We’ve never met baby Owen before, so I can’t wait to get my hands on him!! Not ideal timing given that we just got back from a 15 day vacation, but sometimes you just have to go with it!

Friday morning we got everything packed and ready to go and were on the road a little after 8:30AM. We didn’t have a specific stopping point in mind, but the car GPS said it was 13 hours to home, so we figured we needed to make it at least 6-7 hours to the halfway point. Also, we had checked the weather and knew some crappy weather was coming and wanted to try and avoid as much of it as possible. Thus, our day turned into driving driving and more driving. Miss Reagan was a trooper because other than stopping for food, gas, and to use the bathroom (normally at rest areas), we didn’t stop and do anything fun like normal. What we were able to do though was make it within five hours of home before we stopped for the night!!

We stopped for the night right across the Kentucky border in Oak Grove.  We went ahead and splurged on a King suite so that way Reagan would have plenty of room to move around and play. We weren’t disappointed, the room offered plenty of space and was overall very nice.

Reagan rolling around on the floor stretching and getting all the extra energy out!

Reagan walking around playing with her deer!

After a foiled attempt to go out for dinner, we ended up ordering pizza from a local place and having it delivered.  The pizza was pretty good and it was nice for Reagan to be able to crawl around all over and move while we were eating.

It was a very very long day of driving, we were in the car from 8:30am to almost 7pm, but getting as far as we did definitely made it worth it!