FL trip diversion

For Christmas we planned on taking the kiddos to Destin with 2 other families and rent a gigantic house. Unfortunately the stars didn't align with the other families, so we booked a penthouse condo on the beach/bay.

With all of the craziness of the world and flight situation, on Monday, January 3, 2022, just 19 days before our trip, I woke up in a panic and something told me we need to drive and not fly. Luckily I hadn't booked the airline tickets yet as there was the deal person in me that wanted to wait until it was for sure right (plus apparently I can't book 8 tickets online so I had to call, and I hadn't gotten around to doing it yet!) I did not want to get stuck at the airport (in either place) or have our flights cancelled with our crew. If it was only us, that's one thing, but thinking about the stress of trying to figure out any potential reroutes or any other scenario that might arise made me very anxious. So, I thought about it all day and then told Craig, "hey babe, we need to talk about something." These are usually never good words he likes to hear, and he answered with his usual, "Ok what's going on?" response. I said I really think we need to drive to FL. Craig (thinking for a hot minute like WTH is this woman thinking taking 6 kids in a van for 19 hours): "DRIVE?! How long is it? Why? Are you sure this is a good idea? Ok, whatever you think, we'll do it!" And this exactly is why I love this man! He will push back when needed, offer his opinion, but at the end of the day, we trust each other's decisions and opinions. And finally after literally about 2 minutes of questions, replied, "OK, I'm in!"

So fast forward to today, we have the creeper van booked, and we leave on Friday! We are now bringing one of Kate's friends and have decided to make an adventure of it! We will drive to Nashville Friday and show the kids one of our favorite cities. We will then drive the rest of the way on Saturday and will have gone through 9 states on that route! We plan to take a different route home so they will experience more states! Today I ordered a bunch of things to do in the car and loaded up on snacks! While at first it seemed like a potentially daunting and crazy feat, we are all super excited to create this memory for us all!

Stay tuned as this will be documented and each kid will be completing their school work virtually during our time away (thank you COVID for creating new mechanisms for learning) as well as reporting things from each state they learned! (Maybe this is the inner teacher in me!)

Here's to our first 2022 adventure!