First Road Trip for our Family of Four

Saturday morning we loaded up the Jeep and headed east across the green rolling hills and corn fields of Iowa. After about 3 hours we crossed the mighty Mississippi River and arrived in Nauvoo, Illinois. I was laughing at how full our car was for an overnighter-we probably had more stuff than the pioneers had in their handcarts when they left Nauvoo for their trek all the way to Utah. The drive there was so smooth - Ethan watched Bob the Builder and Caden slept, I started to gain a little confidence that we weren't too crazy taking a 2 year old and a less than 2 month old on a road trip!

We met up with our friends in Nauvoo, ate lunch, and then saw one of the wonderful historic sites before Ethan and Caden had ENOUGH! While the rest of friends visited the sites of Nauvoo we retreated to the hotel for naps and a swim in the pool (Ethan's highlight of the whole trip)!

Ticked he had to get out of the pool.

After our little break we met back up with our friends for dinner and then headed to the pioneer style county fair and the Nauvoo Pageant. It was a lot of fun and the pageant was great despite the heat. The temperature was in the high 90's and super humid so we just sweated the whole night. Ethan soaked his entire shirt within minutes of running around the fair. Poor Caden was a little trooper. We also got to catch up with Sister Hansen (our Mission President's wife) and Jeff Dickamore (who plays Joseph Smith in the pageant) from our mission in Romania.

SO hot!

That night in our hotel we had 2 queen beds so I shared a bed with Caden and Clark shared with Ethan. Ee-ee was thrilled to share a big bed with his Dada! Clark got the short end of the stick on this one. Ethan is quite the thrasher when he sleeps and Clark got a few kicks and feet to the face during the night before Ethan completely thrashed himself right out of the bed onto the floor. Our night ended way too early at that point!

Here is a picture of our whole group at Carthage Jail on Sunday.

Shannon, Tyler, Margaret, Jessica, Bryce, Clark, Caden, Steph, Ethan

I wish I could say our ride home was as peaceful as our ride to Nauvoo! The 3 hour drive took us about 5, but boy was it an adventure.

We started out at Dairy Queen. Since the heat was so intense we had been forcing Ethan to drink a lot of Gatorade and water all day. I was planning on changing his diaper right after we finished eating before we hit the road...well, I was a little too late. While I was chatting with a really cool family visiting from Norway I looked over and Clark had a panicked look on his face. He grabbed the diaper bag and Ethan out of the high chair and ran him outside to the car. As he picked up Ethan I realized his shorts were wet and that there was quite a large puddle on the floor under his high chair...it became quite clear to me, the Norwegian family, and the old man sitting and glaring at the table next to us that Ethan's diaper wasn't doing its job. It was so wet is just stopped working so basically he had an accident all over the Dairy Queen floor. I ran up and told the worker we had a little accident/spill under our table, she asked me if it was water or pop...yeah it is something like that I told her. I had to keep from giggling out loud as I ran out to the car watching the old man stare in horror as the poor employee mopped up our mess! Oh my.

Our 3 hour drive home took about 5 hours with stopping to feed and take care of our cute little Caden who was done! But not all the stops were bad. When we stopped at along the side of the highway next to a train track a train came by and Ethan was thrilled!

We also drove the 6 miles off the highway to Eldon, Iowa to see the home that was in the painting American Gothic.

There is a Visitor's Center there where you can borrow farm clothes and a pitchfork to re-enact the painting. Unfortunately, we got there 30 mins. after it had closed and since no one was there to take our picture we balanced our camera on park benches and tried our own re-enactment.

This next one is my favorite. Ethan was so tired and sick of driving he was quite uncooperative. The camera caught Ethan's beloved Brown Dog in mid air getting ready to wack Clark on the head.

I told Ethan and Caden to put on their best serious faces in front of the little wire house. They listened!

Well by our 5th pit stop we were all getting a little loopy! That is when the real laughing started. Here is the little bug we found on our rearview mirror.

All in all it was a fun trip with my little family of four and our wonderful friends! Nauvoo really is a special place - I loved it as a little girl visiting my grandparents when they served a mission there, I loved it as a teenager visiting again when my grandma served her second mission there, I loved it as I lived there as a student for a semester, I loved it visiting with Clark before we had kids, and I still love it with a 2 year old and 2 month old in tow!

Deleted Scenes:

This was our last 45 mins. on the road. Not even a Thomas movie could keep Ethan happy, so we kept him going by singing the whole way home. He was so tired his words were slurring, I had to get a few little videos. (Watch at your own risk).