WE'RE HOME......13 states and 3130 miles later

Wow ~ what a whirlwind!We are finally home after 5 days of travel. This all started Tuesday night in Birmingham with a quick visit at Joe's sister's house. Then up in the morning, early and off towards Chicago... 4 states later we arrived in Chicago about 10 miles from Kendra's and sat in dead stopped traffic! I think it took us an hour to go that last 10 miles. We left Kendra's the following day at noon with high hopes of making it to South Dakota.... NOPE! It took us 12 hours to get 412 miles. Somewhere in Wisconsin (or maybe Illinois) we had to stop and give Nicholas a bath in the gas station/rest stop sink.... It just seemed to be one thing after another.... We managed to wake up in the morning after spending the night in Albert Lea across from a Starbucks! Halleluiah! Off to South Dakota we went! Made a stop at the Corn Palace and Wall Drug.. an absolute must if you are travelling through South Dakota... We made it yesterday 1031 miles... 18 hours (yes we are crazy) but I think we filled up on lattes as often as we filled up on gas. Starbucks owes us something.. at least a free latte.... we will ALL be going through detox/caffeine withdrawls tomorrow... We made it all the way to Bozeman, MT... pulled in about 1 in the morning thinking that we would have no problem finding a hotel room. I mean, it's MT and Bozeman.... no big deal... yeah right, State Volleyball tournament! oopss! We found a room. Woke up to snow this morning and somehow managed to miss the Starbucks on our way out of town. It took us 12 hours to get back to Gig Harbor and we did manage to find two Starbucks along the way. (yes we are hooked!)

Came home to the Coug game and Caroline very excited to see her little brother. I was excited to see her, but she was more interested in him... oh well, at least she was happy. Not quite the same being home without Joe. Will take some getting used too, but still hoping he'll be here sooner than later. Nicholas did GREAT on this trip for being stuck in his car seat as much as he was. I'm sure he will just enjoy staying home tomorrow and rolling around on the floor all day long. No more crazy adventures for a while...