Our family has mostly recovered from the trip to New York. In fact, Madelyn has already been talking about doing it again, although she has told us that maybe we should take a plane next time. "Driving takes a long time."
After probably the worst night ever in Chicago on the way there it was a relief to make it to New York and the kids actually settled in pretty well there. It helps that Mommom and Poppop are there...some of their favorite people. When we arrived in New York Madelyn started out telling Poppop that they did not need to have a pillow fight, but 10 minutes after we got there she said something to the effect of "well, Poppop, if you really wanted to have a pillow fight we could probably do that..." It was really funny (although maybe you had to be there).
We spent Tuesday out at the farmhouse with Justin's extended family. I think having the kids around was a good thing, and although Justin's grandmother was having a hard time it seemed like she was glad to see them. Madelyn loved running around outside and playing with Justin's cousins and Evan did well with being social. Later in the afternoon Justin took Evan back to be with Mommom so he could get a nap and some quiet which was good for him.
Wednesday was the viewing and the funeral which was a tough day for everyone. Madelyn had a lot of questions about her Great Grandpa. At first she asked why he was sleeping in a crib at the front of the church, but then had a lot of questions about why he died. She also wanted to know how he got to heaven and when she would get to see him and play with him again. She told us that she didn't want him to have died, and asked how he got to heaven. She definitely had some struggles with death and some big questions that we found difficult to answer and also found that our answers did not seem to be able to satisfy her questions.
Thursday we had the burial and said goodbye to most of the family who packed up and began heading home, except for one of Justin's aunts who was staying to help pack things up before heading back to Ohio with Justin's Grandma.
Friday we began the long drive back home. This time Madelyn knew what she was in for and told us right away that she did not want to drive. She let us know that Chicago was a long ways away. We did pack up the kids and get in the car anyway :) It ended up being our longest day of driving for a couple of reasons. 1) I think Madelyn figured out that if she told us she had to go potty we would stop the car. However, she did go every time we did stop and she didn't have a single accident any day of driving, so maybe she really did have to go every hour and a half or so. 2) We noticed that as we got up to cruising speeds on the highway that the car was a little shaky and finally, about a half an hour outside of Toledo we stopped and took a look at the tires and the rear passenger side was flat. When we tried to put air in it we could hear the air coming back out and could see that the rim was bent. Although there seemed to be enough air in the tire at the moment to keep driving we figured we better stop and get the tire checked out. There was a place right off the next exit that we stopped at (the had a card at the travel plaza) and they looked at the car right away, took a sledgehammer to rim and pounded it out, checked again for leaks and told us we were probably good for a while. They only charged us $20...and it was a pretty fast stop for needing to have a car looked at, so it was a good experience. Then we continued on our way. However, it had gotten late enough in the day that we decided we needed to stop for dinner before getting to Chicago...just adding more time. In all that day it took us 10.5 hours...it was long.
Friday night actually went smoothly in Chicago. Whew...
Saturday we got up early so that we could try to make it back to Minneapolis for a grad party. We got on the road. The kids were pretty unhappy about the car by this day and it was a rough day in the car with them. Madelyn finally fell asleep when we hit the state of Minnesota...bummer for us. Justin actually stayed in the car with her when we got to the grad party so she could get a little more sleep.
All in all we survived it and found out that it could be done. 4 days of travel to 3 days in New York isn't a great ratio, and we probably wouldn't choose to drive it again if there was a reasonable alternative, but it is nice to know we can do it if we need to. And, maybe when the kids are a little older the drive wouldn't be quite as tough. We are so glad that we were able to all go as a family and spend the time together.
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