******I posted this trip in 7 different posts and for some reason only 4 of those appear as you scroll through the blog. So please click on one of the following links to look at and read about that part of our trip! There are A LOT of photos!!!!******
We have returned from our 2 week long Super-Vacation! It was fantastic and one to always be remembered. We calculated that we were on the road for approximately 52 hours total! Everyone did really well, and even our van survived.
We were well prepared for this trip in terms of entertainment for the kiddos. We had 2 iPhones and 2 iPods with games, movies, music, and books on them. We had 3 DVD players and every DVD we owned. We even bought them Spy Kids 4 in Great Falls since they love that movie so much. I think the favorites that were watched over and over were the Harry Potter ones, Rio (by Olivia), Chicken Little, and Spy Kids. We had an assortment of coloring books, sketch books, crossword puzzle books, word search books, and journals for them to write in. We had music, various car games to play, and of course just plain old looking out the window! They did SO well, I can hardly believe it! It was only the very last day, when we were just about at the Canadian border that Ben pulled over and threatened to make them walk because they were fighting so much. Only that one day out of 12! Not too bad I must say.
But no matter how prepared you are there is no way to avoid the, "Are we there yet?" In fact we had only reached High River, 30 min into our trip, when Lily asked, "How many more minutes until Disneyland?"
They each had their own set of headphones, and all of the DVD players had two headphone jacks so sometimes they could share.
Lily and Izzy kept their own little journals of the trip. They are so adorable to read and look at their drawings and learn what their perspective of everything was.
Very happy travelers!
Once Chloe fell asleep in a really awkward postion so I reached back to sit her back up, and she woke up slightly and started saying, "Cheese balls, Cheese balls, Cheese balls." It was so funny! I guess she was dreaming about CheeseBalls!
Our first stop was in Great Falls, which made the first trip about 5 hours. Not too bad. Chloe in the past has had a tendency to get car sick on long car rides, but surprisingly she didn't get car sick once the whole trip! When we arrived in Great Falls she said, "And I didn't even throw up once the entire time!" Haha. The hotel there had a bouncy castle and a pool which was great for the kids!
At the pool, and at many other places on this trip, people would always smile and stare at Olivia, I assume because they like looking at a cute little girl like her. Well, she would always get so shy, and on several occasions would say to me, "Mom! People are looking at me again! I don't want people to look at me!" I would say, "Well Olivia, they are looking at you because you are so cute." She would then say, "No! I am not cute! I am a big girl!" It was so adorable.
My parents gave the girls each a little money to spend on something while we were down. They gave them cash in US currency. I held onto it for them, to keep it safe. Lily called it "New York money" and would always ask me if I was keeping her "New York money safe." It was really cute!
So all of our stops were as follows:
Great Falls
Idaho Falls
Salt Lake City
Las Vegas
Anaheim
San Diego
Las Vegas
Salt Lake City
Butte
Home!
We stayed in hotels and camped along the way, to help cut down on costs. We stayed in hotels more than we camped, thank goodness! It was exhausting packing up the tent, deflating the air mattresses, etc. but it was still fun to sleep all together in the tent, and be in the fresh air. But, the hotels were so relaxing.
We saw licence plates from all over the place! We saw some from Florida, Massachusettes, New York, New Jersey, and Mexico!
In Idaho Falls we camped at a campsite called Snake River. The river that runs through Idaho is called Snake River. When we came home to Calgary, Olivia saw the Bow River and said, "Daddy I saw a river and it was the snake river!"
The campground had the biggest play structure I have ever seen! The kids loved it.
Something really fun about this trip was stopping to look at some temples along the way. Here we are at the Idaho Falls temple before we left:
It really was the pride of the city. There were signs and advertisements for it all over the place. It was situated in a really beautiful area with waterfalls near by.
Izzy was kind enough to take a photo of Ben and I at each temple we stopped at. We stopped at the
Idaho Falls Temple
Salt Lake City Temple
St George Temple
Las Vegas Temple
San Diego Temple
and the Cardston Temple on the way home!
We also saw from our vehicle many other temples along the way. There were so many along Utah, it was crazy! We saw the Draper, Jordan, Timpanogos, Provo, and Bountiful just to name a few. They were easy to spot being so bright white.
