VA Adventure I

The kids and I have embarked on our trip to MeMaw and PawPaw's farm house in Virginia! We arrived in one piece last night, and spent several hours playing in the creek, hunting for lightning bugs, and watching the neighborhood bats swoop at dusk. Bill is unable to make the trip due to responsibilities this summer, so rather than not going at all, I am braving the trip with just the kids. My sister-in-law, Christy, was able to drive up with us, but I'll be on my own on the trip home. We went the 7 hours from Thibodaux to Birmingham the first day, and then the remaining 11 hours to Covington, VA the next day.
Benjamin was experimenting with all sorts of ways of measuring time on the drive and of answering the famous question, "How much longer?" He would ask, "Is it quick or longish til' we get there?" or "How far away, now? Forty pounds?" Or, "Is it twenty-sixteen til we get there?" He loved holding the GPS, and pretending like he held the trip controls in his hands and was dictating where to go. The kids played dueling games on their hand-held nintendos, we listened to Whittington the Cat on cd, played the alphabet game, and the animal guessing game. We ate cheesy whales, blow pops, McDonald's "happy" meals, green grapes, Quaker granola bars, Sunkist fruit snacks and Doritos. No wonder trips get your stomach a little queasy!
While on a West Virginia mountain road, Benjamin had a bathroom emergency, and there was no place to stop. So I crouched down in the back seat, and helped Ben tee tee into a Dansani water bottle. He had this crazy grin on his face like "Am I really doing this?" and wanted to show everyone his achievement afterwards - nearly causing big bro to hurl. After that, using the rest stop bathrooms was not nearly as much fun.
Somehow, I think this is one of the wacky trip memories which will stick.