We made it!

The girls did AWESOME!!!! We made both days' drives with NO stops except for gas!! Which meant we got to the hotel much earlier than planned each day, yesterday (we had no internet access at last night's hotel, btw. And let me go on the record that I would gladly drive to the next town (whatever it might be) before I would stay in the Florence, NC Comfort Inn again!!! We were in a separate building quite a ways from the lobby, there was no practical way to bring breakfast back to the room or even just for part of our family to go to breakfast and the rest of us to come later, yes we COULD have walked but seriously, w/ little kids and trying to hurry, and oh yeah, having to cross parking lots and . . . NOT convenient at all! we rushed around this morning to totally pack up & still make it to breakfast before it closed, which is another complaint EVERY other Choice Hotel I have EVER stayed in (& I'd venture to take that further to ANY hotel w/ free breakfast that I've ever stayed in on a weekend, or paid any attention to their weekend schedules) breakfast is open till 10am on weekends (9am is pretty standard during the week). Nope, this one closed at 9am on a Sunday morning!). But by far the biggest complaint, they advertised "free wireless internet" we wouldn't have stayed there otherwise, sad? perhaps, but we both do alot of our work stuff online & really, what else are we gonna do once they're asleep and we have to be quiet? So anyway, we get there, dh was taking a nap, so I started trying to get online. Now, my computer has Vista on it & I'm NOT a fan, so when I couldn't make it work, I blamed Vista. Once dh woke up, he played w/ it a little bit, also couldn't make it work, and then we left to go to McD for supper & to burn off kid energy. So, we got back to the room, and dh, also blaming Vista for me not being able to get online, tried with his computer, and couldn't get on. Called the front desk, come to find out, the wireless signal isn't strong enough to reach our room, we were welcome to bring our laptops to the lobby & be online there. Huh? I was SOOOO annoyed! Needless to say, going and sitting in the lobby isn't an option w/ kids. So, we just all had an early night last night.

So anyway, we'll be finding a different hotel to stay in on the return trip. Actually we probably would have anyway, since it seems apparent that we can go more than half way. Although obviously the girls might not be quite such good travelers on the return trip.

They did GREAT! I'd brought plenty of videos, and other things to keep them entertained (actually we didn't go through all the "suprise bags" either day, so we should have more than enough things to entertain them on the trip home). DH had been very skeptical of my suggestion that we bring sandwich stuff to eat in the car instead of taking time to stop & eat at lunch, but I figured it wasn't that big a deal to bring along some bread & egg salad and if we didn't eat it on the trip down we could have it for supper one night while we were down here. I also figured we might potentially eat lunch in the car & THEN stop at McD or BK and let the kids play (and get a little something for dh & I to snack on while they played), or just stop at a rest area and run them through a highly active version of Simon Says or something to burn off steam. As it was, no stopping was necessary. AND they didn't nap either day.

Now we're here, we actually gave the girls the option of going to Sea World this afternoon (since we have season passes for there, going for a few hours is an option, and we got here a little before 4:00, they're open to 8:00 so we could have been there for at least a couple hours) and they opted to swim here at the hotel instead. It IS a very nice outdoor pool, today is overcast, and cool enough that I'm enjoying sitting by the pool watching them, but not so cool that they'll freeze to death. And DH is happily catching up on the football he didn't get to listen to as much as he'd have liked on the way down (the DVD player in the car is set up with headphones so the girls could watch/listen on headphones while we listened to the radio or a CD, but they don't like the headphones long term, so after awhile they'd ask if they could "listen w/o the earphones" and poor daddy had to listen to Dora or Mary Poppins or whatever instead of the football game.

Oh, forecast was for rain the entire drive down, it was raining when we left home yesterday, but cleared off quickly and we had NO more rain yesterday and only a few scattered showers today. Forcast for the rest of the week has changed from thunderstorms to showers, so hopefully we'll have a good week and not get TOO wet LOL.