Iowa 2011 - The Car Ride There

**Our family trip to Iowa was actually last week, but I never took the time to sit down and blog about it, so I'll be making up for it this week so you can all share in the fun we had while we were there!**

It takes a long time to get to Iowa from Tennessee. Sixteen hours, just of driving. That doesn't include gas stops, lunch stops, potty stops, "I just thought I had to pee" stops.

Sixteen hours is a loooong time to be in a car with four small children.

THANKFULLY, I have four wonderful children who were VERY well behaved during the car trip. That's not to say they didn't have the occasional disagreement and "she's got her hand on my carseat" squabbles, but that only happened a handful of times on any given day. And can I just say how thankful I am for car DVD players and Nintendo DSs?? VERY.

The first night of our vacation we stopped in Normal, IL and had fun laughing about the name of the town. Josiah was up to other things. This is the sign he made in the car during the drive:


And this is the note he passed to Emily in the car:


The note, part 2:


That Josiah, he so crazy!! :)

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The only other notable part of the drive was the stop in Blue Earth for blizzards (or other DQ treat of choice). And of course we had to take pictures with the Jolly Green Giant!

**side story: When we first pulled in the parking lot, Josiah looked at the Jolly Green Giant statue and said, "Hey look--Peter Pan!" Emily and I had a good laugh about that one**











Everyone is up there standing under the Jolly Green Giant in that last picture...it's just hard to see them because I had to be back so far to get all of the giant in the picture!