on the road!

i really should have taken a picture of us all loaded up, but i didn't.  after the rough start to the week, today actually went fairly smoothly.  i even had time to wipe out the entire refrigerator since we had finished off almost all of the food in preparation for our trip.  matt got home just before two and i had already loaded the whole car so we just needed to grab a few more things and hit the road.

i had printed out all kinds of roadtrip bingo, scavenger hunt, license plate checklist and coloring sheets for the kids and loaded them up on dollar bin clipboards from target so they were really happy and content all afternoon.

i actually can't remember what state we were in when we stopped to eat at panera in a mall.  we like to stop at a mall because we can walk for a little bit.  this mall happened to have two or three huge flying saucer/spaceships hanging from the ceiling that were made out of balloons.  they were really very cool and very large - like the size of a car.  i had to take a picture.  i love how they all leaned in for the second picture but didn't look at me.

 we also enjoyed driving through the clouds in west virginia.

it was a really beautiful drive.  we did see several accidents and one happened just a few car lengths in front of us!  if both drivers had not reacted the way they did, things could have been much worse.  basically an suv drifted into the side of a huge trailer truck, bounced off and hit it again before regaining control and they both pulled off the road.  hopefully, that would be the most eventful part of our drive!  love.