On the Road Again!

My mom and her family in Iowa organized a surprise 60th birthday party for my aunt Maureen. We had planned on staying home – I had a closing coming up, and Seth couldn’t miss any school. Then, Seth found out he was being sent to Arizona for work, and my closing was clear and ready to go, so I had a crazy idea: I could drive myself and the boys to Iowa for the weekend, and surprise everyone! It’s only a 10 hour drive…well, 12-ish, with a potty-trained kid in tow. No big deal, right?

Actually, it ended up being okay – the kids were great on the drive, and thought it was a fun adventure. We made it in one piece, thanks to the GPS, and in pretty decent time. We made it in time to spend time with the families, and were happy to be part of the surprise party. The boys loved playing with the cousins, 2nd cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and anyone else they met. We also spent a morning at a farm, riding on a tractor-pulled wagon hayride, and checking out the pumpkin patches and cornfields.

The drive home was a little less enjoyable, because both boys were very sad to leave and kept asking me to “turn around and go back to Auntie Maureen’s house, pretty please!” We’ll probably be making that trip again in 2010…but I probably won’t be driving solo.