Florida - the trip there

The Way to Florida

We started our trip by heading to Tuscon on Friday afternoon to pick up Glade. He was in a golf tournament for work. After picking him up, he wanted to go to Best Buy to get a lap top so he could do some work while we were gone. It took almost a full hour, it was very frustrating. In the meantime, I let the kids out of the van to eat some cupcakes someone had given Glade for his birthday (which was today). They ended up climbing on the posts there and had a grand time doing it!

Dalin, Rhett and Brooklyn

Rhett

Brooklyn

Dalin giving me his "cool" look.

Stephen and Katy

It took us about 4 days to get to Florida. We mostly just drove and let the kids out as often as possible. We would drive till late, check into a hotel, then have breakfast and head out again. We didn't do a whole lot of sightseeing along the way. Somewhere in Texas, we noticed Steve's truck was leaking fuel. He had just gotten this fixed right before we left. While at a Dairy Queen, they had to change the oil because that's where the fuel was ending up. That, and my windshield. While they worked on the truck, the kids played in this dirt spot and Bo got absolutely filthy. Katy fell in a little pipe and scraped up her leg. She was not happy, so Whitley sat in the van with her watching Dora while they worked on the truck. It was SO humid. Once the truck was fixed (temporarily), I was lucky enough to find a hose connected to DQ that led out behind some dumpsters. I stripped Bo down and hosed him off. It was even nice and warm! When we went to head out, my van wouldn't start. I'm guessing because of all the things that were plugged in while it wasn't running. We had to jump it and then we were off. We had to change the oil in the truck about every 300 to 500 miles. What a pain.

Katy looking very serious about her work. (Princesses singing the ABC's)

Glade and Steve changing the oil. They got really good at it!

The big dirt field

Jumping the van


Katy sticking her sweaty little head out the window while she and Whitley waited in the van

My little dirty birdy

These shoes are actually green, but not after he played in the dirt spot, hence the hosing down

I tried to take some food with us so we didn't have to eat out ALL the time. This was our uncrustable lunch outside of a gas station. Again, it was soooo humid. No one wanted to be outside for long.

We decided to go to the beach on Lake Charles in Louisiana. There was a really big bridge we went over to get there. Miserably hot and humid. This was on Father's Day. We told the kids "do NOT get wet, feet only!" For the most part they did really well. They looked for shells and enjoyed the warm water. Bo and Katy had a hard time sticking to the do not get wet thing. Bo just got wet little by little till finally he was just plain swimming and diving. Katy was a little more subtle about it, but she was wet up to her chest as well. She at least continued to hold up her shorts like she was trying to not get wet.

I took about 6 shots of this trying to get Bo to look at me. He just couldn't bring himself to get out of the sand. By the time he finally stood up, the other kids were done saying "cheese".

The only picture I took. My hair was gross the entire time. Humidity and I do NOT get along!

Katy not getting wet

Bo giving in and having a ball. We made sure to give him a stern lecture later about being obedient.

This is how we kept Katy happy. We bought some new DVDs including a 4 episode Dora the Explorer. It made us crazy because she watched it over and over and over. She cried a lot in the car so we ended up giving her pretty much anything she wanted. She went from our little princess to the Queen. The other kids would complain about it being there turn to watch a movie, but they she would scream for Dora. We let her just so we didn't have to hear her anymore. Luckily we had two DVD players.

We also stopped at the Baton Rouge Temple. It was really little but very pretty. We tried to use the timer setting on the camera which was propped on the back of the truck. You can't tell, but I'm huffing and puffing here from running back and forth trying to get a decent picture. Glade's sister Joy went on her mission here so it was fun to see where she spent her time.

While we were looking around and talking about Joy, the kids started playing some finger jousting game. They were wrestling each other and usually ending up on the ground. Not very reverent for our surroundings, but I'm sure Heavenly Father would understand since they had been in the car for so many hours!

This is a picture of the mirror in our hotel room. In the time it took us to get our stuff in the room, all the mirrors and windows completely fogged over due to the moisture. Poor Nick, this happened to his glasses every time he stepped out of the van. Of course, every where we stopped, the natives would tell us this was not normal, just having a bad spell. Nice.

Because we had two cars, the kids switched back and forth so it was always a different mixture of kids in each one, which was very helpful. The time is a blur, I wish I would have written more down along the way. I spent much of the time reading the last twilight book and diffusing children in the back. By about the third day, I was very done having food wrapped in paper. I like to eat out, but let me tell you... enough is enough. One night we just went to the grocery store and bought rotisserie chicken and rolls. It was great to have food that wasn't greasy and processed. Chelsey didn't go with us, she had to work, but we had our nephew Derrick there so we were still at 9 children. We had a lot of fun and a lot of confusion and a lot of frustration, but all in all it went well.