Going to Georgia, 7.13.16, day 2

I did not want to get up to my alarm at 6am on Wednesday morning which was evidenced by Jared groggily telling me--a few times--that it was going off. I wanted to sleep until 6:30 when Jared would be getting up, but we also wanted to be on the road by 8am (9am GA time) and knew I needed to get going. After Jared and I showered, we woke up the kiddos. They got dressed pretty quick, we had prayers, then walked downstairs to have breakfast. This hotel offered a hot breakfast complete with eggs (or something that resembled eggs--blah), sausage (which Jared said was okay), waffles (the only decent thing), plus oatmeal, cereal, breads, OJ (which had an after taste) and a couple of fruits. As expected, there wasn't much that Karcyn could eat even if she was interested in doing so. Furthermore, I wasn't able to verify if those foods were GF anyway, so I was especially grateful I thought to bring a big box of GF Honey Nut Cheerios with us into the hotel for that very reason. We ate our fill, then headed upstairs to pack up and hit the road again.

I checked under the beds, in the drawers, in the beds, in closets, behind doors and everywhere I could think of to make sure nothing was left behind by our seven man group. Stray socks, phone chargers, JJ's little cannon...we got it all. Another hour or so down the road though and I remembered I left some small bags of candy in the mini-fridge to harden them up. They were for behavior incentives--and mommy munchies. Drats. Fortunately, I didn't spend a lot of money on them and they were easily replaced. But boy, they were missed!

Jake drove us all the way to Birmingham, Alabama before Jared took over.

We stopped for our picnic lunch around 11am at a rest stop. I thought it was a bit early, but technically, it was 12 noon in GA, so we went ahead and had lunch. JJ was getting antsy shortly after lunch, so we stopped listening to Harry Potter and put in the movie "Aladdin." Our family loves quoting movies!

As we got closer to Atlanta, I told the kids we should write down all the different PEACHTREE streets we find while in Georgia. In the limited path we took through Atlanta on our trip, we only found seven out of fifty or more :)

-Peachtree Ind. Blv.
-N. Peachtree Road
-New Peachtree Road
-Old Peachtree Road
-Peachtree Street
-West Peachtree Place
-Peachtree Dunwoody Road

This picture was taken around 3pm and traffic wasn't really bad yet!

We pulled into Kelly's driveway around 5pm, after being stuck in Atlanta traffic for about an hour. Kelly came out to the car to meet us and when Cooper saw her, he observed, "Hey, she looks like you, Mom!" Imagine that. The kids oozed out of the car on both sides and Kelly announced proudly that she didn't need any introductions because she and Steve had been studying their school pictures. Haha ;) Kelly tried putting Steve on the spot by testing his memory of their names and faces and in age order, no less, but I told her that was mean! There are times I don't even get it right!

After the hugs and hellos, we went inside the house and met Rex, their cute pug dog and I started working on our red beans and rice and sausage dinner. It wasn't in our trip budget to eat out for dinner on this day, so before we left home, I asked Kelly if I could cook for us/them. She said I could cook dinner for her any time I wanted :)

While we waited for dinner, Karcyn couldn't stop talking to Kelly and Calvin chummed up to Steve. Poor people. The kids did go outside in their back yard which is mostly a huge, sloped hill covered in pine straw--which my kids had to climb and slide down and mess up. *sigh*

Somehow, Calvin managed to trip and fall and did a number on his knee requiring several band aids. Never a dull moment with our gang!

Jake went on a 4.2 mile run, which included hills, while we had dinner. He got back in time to eat his dinner while we cleaned up the kitchen. After things were tidied up, we got back in the burb (Jake and Cooper went with Kelly and Steve in their truck) and set off to find the condo from their house. It was only about 10 minutes away. Then Steve and Kelly treated us to ice cream at Dairy Queen. It was very yummy, refreshing and so very sweet of them!

When we got back to their house, we got the little kids ready for bed while Jake went all ga-ga over Steve's Porsche. :) Steve was very gracious in allowing our first-born an opportunity to sit behind the wheel! Steve told us that he's even taken Grandma Lee for a spin in it a time or two!

While we set up air mattresses and bean bags for the kids, Steve warmed my heart when he gave Calvin and JJ each a large red glow stick in case they needed to see in the middle of the night and didn't want them to be scared. We were crashing at Kelly's house for the night because we didn't want to pay an extra day for the condo when we were originally planning to arrive in GA around 9pm or later. We're so grateful for the trouble they went to in putting us up for the night to help us cut costs. But I was even more grateful we took an extra day to get to travel, getting us to their house earlier so we could enjoy some time with them before heading to bed. Though, by that point, the kids were still not ready to go to sleep. Jared stayed in the guest room with the three littles while I sat and watched Kelly and Cooper play something like "Kinetic Adventures" on the X-Box 360 where they had to use their bodies to play. It was really funny watching them jump, twist, lurch, yelp, duck and hop around. It looked like a great workout. They were both panting a bit :)

Jake and Steve were watching a show downstairs and talking about this and that. After about 30 minutes, Jared emerged from the room with the kids and reported they were still awake! We decided to just leave them and visited for a little bit more downstairs before getting the big boys set up for the night and heading to bed ourselves. We had a big day ahead of us!