There's No Place Like Home

Last day on the road:
Everyone slept in late, except me. I surfed the net and got us all our free continental breakfast. When David and I began waking up reluctant little girls, I thought it was gonna be a crabby kind of day for a few little people. Thankfully, it wasn't too bad.

Once we all loaded up in the car, I began rationing activites to keep their minds busy. One of the things Jo-Ann gave the girls was a little activity called "Scratch & Stick". It's a little sheet of holographic stickers covered in a thin layer of paint. They scratch off the areas of sticker they want a hologram to show through and stick them on a scenery board. That activity kept their attention for over an hour. THANK YOU, Jo-Ann!

We stopped in Cordele, GA. for lunch at a Chinese buffet.I am not a big fan of Chinese food and buffet's in general just gross me out. I wasn't too excited about this place but our options were limited and it was more important to me that Miss Picky, Arianna, eat something besides vanilla wafers in the car. It turned out to be a decent place, very clean and chic. I even ate a little bit which is something I was not planning to do.

At the buffet, we took our time, ate our fill and hit the bathrooms. I drove the rest of the way to Tallahassee. This was the 1st time in days that I drove the bus. It did pretty well but I did notice about an hour out of Tallahassee that it was blowing smoke. If I drove slowly, it didn't blow smoke but If I drove anything above 55, it was a big blue smog machine. I looked around, only farmlands, at best. I wondered how far in this unshaded Georgia heat we'd have to walk before finding a gas station or shop. To get those negative thoughts out of my head, I instead started counting miles to home on David's phone's GPS.

We finally made it to Tallahassee around 6:30. Everyone cheered when we crossed the Georgia/Florida line. Aurora and Athena claimed they forgot what our house even looked like inside, we'd been away so long.

David took me to get my car from Kara's house. The girls got in the air conditioned van with me while David headed home. We picked up the cat from my sister, Katie's house and chatted a while. The cat didn't seem to even care that we'd come back for her. I think she really enjoyed her vacation away from us. We couldn't get the dog because our dog sitter had evening plans. We were not about to come all the way back into town after landing HOME. Molly would just have to wait til tomorrow.

Back at home, David was hard at work getting things back to normal. He'd set up the tent and chairs to dry out that had gotten wet a few days before. He brought things inside from the bus. We all worked together to ge the majority of our things put away. Then we played Mario Kart until way past bedtime. I must say, when I fianlly flopped into bed, it was such bliss. A family vacation is a time of discovery, bonding, even trying at times. Nothing makes you appreciate what you have at home except an extended vacation away from it. There's no place like home!