Our first family vacation through the States

Photo by Chris Lawton on Unsplash
As a family, we have gone camping, we have taken 6 hour car rides to a baseball game, 4 hour rides to visit friends for the weekend, but we have never taken a vacation as a family, or even as a married couple after our honeymoon.


So when my dad offered for us to come stay at the house he was renting in Georgia for work, we jumped on the opportunity!


   

   

   

Our kids are really good car-riders so it was an easy option to choose driving down. We left our house at 7 pm Thursday night and arrived around 5 pm on Friday. The trip took 22 hours (under ideal circumstances the trip should have taken 17.5 hours) with nursing stops, gas stops, potty breaks, and a little bit of hurricane Harvey sweeping through Kentucky.

We had dinner when we got to the house, Grandpa gave the kids a couple of the toys that he had strategically picked out for them and we just leisurely settled in.

 
 

Then we all crashed - it was a welcome relief. Lincoln had a tough time and was up quite a bit through the night - I was pretty groggy when he woke up most times.

The next day my mom and I took a road trip to Ellijay, Georgia to meet my friend Rebekah (from Hargraves Home and Hearth)! It was such a sweet meeting and a nice time to visit, uninterrupted, with my mom.


  



  

The next day we bopped around looking (unsuccessfully) for touristy Georgia souvenirs and spent the evening on the boat, swimming, and kayaking.

 

 

Our third day, Andrew and I celebrated 8 years married, we got to go to Amicalola Falls, Andrew and I checked out Big D's BBQ for dinner, and on the way home we went over the Buford Dam and made our way all around Lake Lanier.

   

   


Our fourth day, we spent the morning packing the car and we took off around noon, in hopes of touring things a bit slower on the way home. We also booked a hotel just outside of Nashville for the night. Our first whole family hotel stay!

   

 

The kids did amazing at the hotel, we got there around 8 pm so Andrew took the older two swimming and I kept the younger two in the hotel and took a nice, long, hot shower - it's amazing how gross driving all day makes you feel.

We packed back up after breakfast and "hit it hard" for the way home!


Wednesday was a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG day. It felt like forever, but we were a bit more leisurely with our stops and didn't time nursing/bathroom/fueling breaks as efficiently as we had on the way down.

After what felt like forever, we made it into Illinois. We decided to stop and visit the Man of Steel and the giftshop. The whole stop was a disappointment besides the statue and the fact that it was a GORGEOUS day - the gift shop was a thrift store that was charging 5x too much for the "vintage" pieces they had and there was no open public bathroom with a changing station in it. We went into the Hardees and I wasn't sure if someone died in there, or if their meal didn't sit right with them, I walked in and walked out and we waited for Daddy and the brothers to come out of the men's room.

   
   
  

After stopping at the Superman statue, we pushed HARD to get home. We ended up stopping in Madison to visit a couple of friends we hadn't seen in 5 years - BEST. DECISION. EVER. It was a great break at 10 pm, the rest of the trip was easy (still long - but easy).


   

The way home took SO. LONG, but overall, the trip was wonderful!!! The kids did so well - it spurred a desire for us to do much more traveling as the kids grow up. We are so looking forward to doing more summer trips.

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