Birmingham or Bust

 Last year we had such a fun time on our vacation to Florida, that we decided to do it again this year.  This time, though, we are making it a family trip, as Ron, Peg, Jason's grandparents, Julie, Andrew, and Benjamin are joining us.  But we wanted to have some time to see my family too, as well as to celebrate my mom's birthday.  So we are driving down a week early.  We'll start with a couple days in Birmingham with Michelle and Sam, and then we'll head to Valparaiso to spend a few days at my parents' house.  Jason will work from their homes, since it's not feasible for him to take two weeks off of work.  Today was the beginning of the long vacation, and we left for Birmingham to see Michelle and Sam. We left pretty early, just as I had hoped. But we had a few things that made the journey take longer than it really should have.

Firstly, Hannah got car sick while we were still in Missouri so we had to stop and clean her up. And then this was the first time we have used a car-top carrier. Because we also had to buy a roof rack, we got a soft carrier this year to spread out the cost of a hard-top carrier until next year. So it was a learning curve and Jason had to tighten and adjust the carrier a few times because we would way rather stop than lose our stuff or damage the paint on my car. He has it all figured out now, so it was a one-time thing, but it still took some time today.

We stopped for a full hour for lunch in Arkansas at the same place we did last year so the kids could stretch their legs (Yes we were the white-trash family with a baby with no clothes. It wasn't worth the time to get her more clothes because the luggage with the kids' clothes was on the roof and it wasn't cold). We didn't do a long stop again until we got to Birmingham and the kids did really great. As we were getting back on the road after lunch, it started to rain and it didn't stop raining the rest of the way, but luckily we made it to Sam and Michelle's house before all the storms and tornadoes came through Arkansas and Mississippi, pretty much exactly where we had been driving earlier in the day.