Two Week Vacation

There really has been a good reason for my long blog hiatus! The girls and I went on a two week road trip/vacation. I will blog as much as I can in one sitting and then come back and finish the rest at different intervals and entries. We had a fabulous trip and the only thing that could have made it any better would have been to have Ben with us. But he had to stay home and work. We missed him terribly but are happy to be back home with him. We have done absolutely nothing the past three days. It's been wonderful. I have managed to unpack, do some laundry, and clean out the car but that is about it. Audrey has been sleeping in big time. Monday morning she slept in until 9:30am! Today she woke up at 7am and fell back asleep with me until 8:30! I am loving it! Well, here is the start of some long blogs with lots of pictures!

We started on a Monday and spent two days driving. The first day was a 14 hour day. It was supposed to be a 11 1/2 hour day but because of all the flooding in Iowa we got an extra two and a half hours. I-80 was closed almost all the way across the state so I ended up taking Highway 30 across the entire state of Iowa. Let's just say that when I entered Nebraska and got back on a freeway with a 75 mile per hour speed limit I could've cried! :) What was amazing to me was seeing the water damage to all the crops in Iowa. Most of the fields we passed all had small ponds in them. Water was very close to the road and I just feel so bad for the farmers because there is no way they will be able to save their crops this year.
I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw this! I had to take a detour on the detour road to get around this! Crazy!
These next three shots are taken from my window (while I'm driving but I did so very safely!). None of this water should be here. It was really depressing to drive across Iowa and see this!


The girls did a good job with all the driving. We stopped every three to three and a half hours to use the bathroom. We usually ate in the car to save more time. I have to say the girls are amazing travelers. We had movies to watch, music to listen to, drawing pads, and books to entertain us. And since Spring has been so late this year we saw all the cute baby animals you could ever want to see. Horses (always a favorite), cows, and sheep. It was such a car full of girls because every time (and I mean every time) we saw a baby animal over the course of two weeks we all went, "Ah! How cute!" Ben would have been thoroughly disgusted with us by that last day driving through North Dakota on our way home! :)