Better Keep Your Eyes on the Road Ahead

Maggie and I packed our bags yesterday and hit the road along with my mom, leaving Barry and Sydney behind to hold down HBHQ until we return. With North Dakota in our sights, we’ve already made it to Missoula, Montana without much of an issue. We’ve literally got a bag of tricks packed to distract Maggie and so far she seems most content flipping the pages of her books and playing games with my mom . My mom is the MASTER baby wrangler and Maggie adores her, so it has worked out perfectly so far.

Tonight Chach, Cora, Sue and my grandparents are catching up with us and by tomorrow morning we will have collected Izak, Phil and my dad to complete our traveling troop.  With a stop to soak in some hot wada tomorrow, I think we’ll be ready to join ranks of our North Dakota contingent.

The purpose of this trip is to celebrate my grandparent’s 60th wedding anniversary and we’re headed back to Devils Lake, where both of them grew up. The last time I made this trip I was 9 and I mostly remember getting sick and the Lewis and Clark Caverns. ( I didn’t get sick at the caverns, but I think I rocked my blue neon spandex outfit there, which is a different kind of sick.) I also remember that we used Walkie Talkies to talk between the two cars.

Now we’ve got cell phones to connect the dots between our vehicles and Google hardly lets us get lost. Admittedly, so far we’ve been relying on paper maps to guide our passage and stopping when it feels right or the gas ticker tells us to. Maggie is in the midst of cutting some molars and at about midnight last night I was tempted to strap Maggie back into her bathing suit and take her swimming again because she was a huge bucket of fuss.

Tonight is already looking to be much, much better with a bit of thai food and a leftover yogurt from the free breakfast bar, we’re again ready to dunk in the swimming pool before going night-night.

Maggie is wandering around the room right now, naked,  holding the remote up to her ear having a conversation with somebody, probably calling Papa and Sydney. Her vocabulary has increased –  new word(s) each day. More on that later, but her favorite word is ‘hot’. Apparently we use it a lot in regards to what we’re eating and the weather and she is a little parrot.

So, more to come from our 4 generation road trip tomorrow!!