California Vacation - The Drive Down

We are in California. We left early this morning. The plan was 5, I could have done 4, but reality was 6, cause I live with a bunch of sleepy heads, so even 6 was really pushing it. We took two cars. I had all the girls plus Wesley and Daniel.

Wesley taking his turn in the coveted front seat

Corey had the rest of the boys in his car (Joseph, Eth, Hyrum and Owen). We made it to Mesquite on our first leg, where we filled up and let the kids have a late breakfast at McDonalds.

I do not like McDonalds. I do not like fast food. I do not like to spend money on fast food. Yet, here we are for convenience sake. Corey put money on each older kids' debit card and put them in charge of buying food for themselves and one of their younger siblings.

Which was an ok idea for practicality purposes, but the CFO in me was freaking out about how much they would spend without me supervising (that breakfast cost us $99.75! ...so heads up to the frugal witch in my soul that there's a good chance we're going over budget, so keep those thrifty expectations low...) Pretty soon it was back in the car. It was a long drive. There were two places where traffic was super backed up - on the way out of Las Vegas clear up through the mountain pass, and then again in California, we found out at the end that there was an accident near Cajon Junction, and it had the freeway backed up all the way to Hesperia and Victorville. That added an hour too. It's a pain to be in slow traffic, it was esp painful after already spending 9 hours in the car, but better to be waiting in traffic than to be the person with the totaled car or in the ambulance, so we'll count our blessings. The kids were troopers. They did a good job sleeping. After the traffic and after his second nap, Daniel seemed to be okay that we were still trapped in the car, up until the last 30 min. He was so cute and for some weird reason kept saying "HAPPY!!" then a pause... then "HAPPY!!"

We were all happy when we got to the hotel. Time to unpack and unwind.

Are you glad that drive down is over! Yes, he is HAPPY!