we're here!

After 19 hours, spread over 2 days we have arrived at grandma's house. 1063 miles. Forget over the river and through the woods. We went over the interstate and through the traffic.

DH was able to leave work early Thurs so we left home at 4:30pm. 40 minutes later we were stuck in rush hour traffic. It took us about a hour to go 10 miles. It took us almost 3 hours to travel 100 miles. So we did not get as far as we had hoped that night. We'd hoped to get south of Columbia, SC so we would miss their morning rush hour, but we ended up stopping just north of it at 11:30pm. We'd travelled 350 miles in 7 hours. The boys were asleep in the back seat, woke up briefly to be moved to the room and then dropped back off. I didn't sleep much. I can't take the Lunesta if I can't get 7-8 hours & at best I would maybe get 6.5. I think I slept from about 3am to 6:30am. We were in WaffleHouse by 7:15 and on the road at 8am. we encountered no traffic. The traffic 45 miles from home would be the only standing still traffic we would encounter. However there were A LOT of cars on the road. Packs of them. And there was rain. DH drove through a patch in SC that lasted about 15 minutes & was heavy at times. I hit a long off and on spell between Jacksonville & Tampa that would come and go and be so heavy at times that I was about to pull over. We arrived at my folks place at 8:15p. Boys were in bed around 9:30 and I was stumbling to bed around 10:45 under the effects of a Lunesta. Brad fell asleep about 10 minutes later.

books listened too - Kitchen Confidential, Peril at End House
movies watched - Cars, Robots, El Dorado, Knights of Fix Alot, Ice Age 2, Shrek 2
times "Are we there yet" was asked - about 4000
fast food meals eaten - blessedly, only 2 - Arby's Thurs night & Burger King for lunch on Friday. We skipped dinner Friday and just kept driving, eating the apples, bananas and pretzels I brought with us.
items left behind in our rush to leave - books for bedtime stories, razors, facial scrub

So far today the males have gone swimming, I had Quiznos, DH & DS2 took a 3 hour nap, DS1, Grandpa & I went for ice cream, remaining gifts were wrapped, a load of laundry has been washed and Grandpa went and bought a wireless internet router for his cable modem after DH & I discovered they didn't have one (and that we couldn't get online with our laptops) & told him how great the were. Now the 4 adults can use their 4 laptops to surf the web all at once from anywhere in the house. I'm wondering if my brother or his wife will be arriving with one (or 2)? Maybe I can get them all to download YIM or Hello and we can all Im one another from across the living room. :)

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukka and Blessed Yule to everyone!