From This Day Forward: the journey continues: Day 1

"Real" packing begins!

9:30pm

Just after midnight.

What's left...the holding area!

The time when Jared said, "Let's do one more quick look around and let's go". I think I nailed it with my prediction ;)

"We're going to Georgia! Are you ready?!"

"Come on! Smile!"

"Yay! Here we goooo!"

Ok, so we find a little park in a neighborhood in Maryland, about 3.5 hours into our trip. This is good because the kids are starting to get antsy. Judah goes on one of those carousel things for the first time and loves it! He can stop smiling. Aylah doesn't want her lunch anymore and starts running towards the action. She climbs up on the jungle gym, and Jared follows because another little boy came and Judah is playing with him. Ay wants to slide down the slide so Jared asks me if I'm ready to catch her. As he sticks his head in the tube to let go, he smells something....but it's too late. Yep, that's right. Some doofus peed in the slide and Ay slid right through it. (Hence the non matching PJ pants in the pictures from here on out). Ugh. Big ugh!

As Jared is retrieving the pants, it starts sprinkling and Judah is screaming at the top of his lungs because he heard thunder, we were outside, and he was terrified we were going to get hurt because we weren't inside. We had only been there maybe 10 minutes and I wanted them to eat the food I had laid out on the picnic table underneath the pavilion.

Next thing we know, it starts down pouring. And I mean DOWN POURING! We're getting a little wet under the pavilion, but that's ok because, well... The car is a walk away and we'd be WAY wetter walking to the car. Just then, the lightening strikes start. Closer, closer....crackllllllle, snap, boooom! Right by the park. At this point, Jared gets worried and wants us to get out of there. I'm scared but talking to Judah about "wow, how neat is that?!" to keep him from being hysterical. He's really not sure about this.
Jared runs to the car and come back with a golf umbrella. I'm thinking, "we're all going to die" as we run to the car with this lightening rod of an umbrella.

Jared come back looking like he walking through a river--there was no way to get to the cars without stepping in like 8 inches of water. He's sopping wet.

What in the world?!

And away we go! Next stop, Chik Fil-a!
And too bad they have a play place...... And it was only a mile or 2 from the park.....and it wasn't raining by the time we got there...... Yes, I'm serious.

Anyway, I've always heard of Chil Fil-a and wanted to see what the big deal was. I got a chicken salad sandwich. It was meh...Good for fast food I suppose :)

Fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinally, we get to Virginia. Potty break! Aylah was not having it. She's cranky and trying to push this pole over.

Hmmfph.

The hotel!!! We pulled into the hotel right around 9 o'clock. Being in and out of the car since 10 of 11:00 o'clock that morning, it was a welcomed respite.