its a long long road

it is a long long road to arizona from here.  ryan has three weeks of vacation a year and we decided to take one of them in january and go see all our arizona family.  he worked nights for three weeks before vacation, so he asked us to go to arizona early.  something about sleeping better during the day when we aren't home making all kinds of noise while trying to be so quiet....

we contemplated flying with ryan driving out when he came, but grandma berta said she'd fly out and drive with us so that ryan could fly when he was done working.  we left our house at about 4:30 and picked grandma up at david and julie's house around 5:30 when we started the long long long drive across texas.  luckily you just get on I-10 and stay there until about the last little bit when you drive over to thatcher. 

after driving through lots of rain and almost getting in an accident (traffic came to a sudden, complete stop around a curve in the road) we made our first stop in san antonio.  the gas station had these huge statues outside that the boys thought were awesome.  

we made several stops along the way for gas, lunch, dinner, breaks, diapers, potty, ice cream (except there was no ice cream place where we thought there was going to be).  the boys were so good.  i took the laptop with a couple of movies, just in case, and never even needed to pull it out - mostly because grandma is extremely entertaining.  isaac loved to sing '5 little monkeys swinging in a tree' with grandma and laughed so hard when he got to be the crocodile.

we got cody a new water bottle (like bailey and maddie's christmas water bottles) for the trip, but he had a hard time adjusting holding it down to use the straw.  grandma had a soda in a cup with a straw, so she taught cody 'you suck your's, i'll suck mine.  ready?  go.'  that's pretty much all we heard for about half the trip.  cody still says it anytime someone else is taking a drink when he is and its a great tool to get him to eat.  (cody, you eat your's, i'll eat mine.  ready? go)

we thought we'd just drive until we were tired of driving and then just get a hotel somewhere for the night.  once you get so close, its just easier to finish the drive, so we got some dinner at a bit of a sketchy chinese place and made it to thatcher around 8 or 9.  amazing, i even drove the whole day!