Road Trip 2012- Florida

My sister took most of the pics on vacation, most of what I took was on her camera too because part of the problem of having a fancy camera is you have to think and use fancy settings and I was too busy having fun! She did a more comprehensive post of the trip on her blog Amanda's Blog.  Here are a few she didn't post, and the few I took on my camera.

 

The General just chillin around the beach house

  Berk spent an entire day in her jammies watching tv and playing games on my phone

 Our resident Pterodactyl enjoying a quiet moment on the floor

 Elliott writing in the journal about our trip. She looks super excited about it doesn't she?

 Almost all the Pomeroy/Truncali cousins enjoying some Mickey in the morning.  Trying to keep quiet for 5 minutes.

 P loved Ry's Mickey Animal

 I let the kids help me make brownies.  They all enjoyed helping me clean the bowl too.

 

 The kids with the Mazel glasses.

 My cousins Carter and Chase are the most adorable well behaved boys ever.  We had so much fun with them!

 Dance party! Elliott and Carter were BFFs the whole trip, they enjoyed "sneaking" food into the bunk room.  There wasn't much "sneaky" about it when I went up and found a bag of chips on the top bunk.  Now that we're home they text eachother occasionally and facetime on their ipods.

 There were lots of fun games to play- even Berk got in on the action

 Cutest little pirate I ever saw

 Patton loved walking up and down the little boardwalk to the beach

 Rylee down by the water on s'mores night

 Carter was still enjoying his s'more for the picture

 

 

 

 

 The last night we tried to get lots of family and group pictures, pretty hard with a group this big! I'm planning on doing a big blog post of all the pics on my photography blog soon.  (Or in 3 months)

 Randy is a year younger than me-  we had lots of fun together as kids and it was so fun to watch our kids have fun together and become buddies.  We don't see them near enough- hoping we can all be better about getting together in the future!

 Rylee was a little sad during pictures- this one cracks me up!

 Patton on his boardwalk again

 Chris and Berk relaxing on the sandbar

 Jaimi (my cousin) brought stuff for the kids to make tye dye shirts.  Chris and I went into town the next day with our monsters and they looked so cute wearing the shirts they made.  Berkley spotted this mermaid and wanted a picture (or 10) with her.

 My little flamingos

 Timeout for screaming and throwing a crayon at me in the restaurant.  I don't know where she gets this behavior from.....

 Elliott claimed P looked like a woman in his muscle shirt

 At the Old Fashioned Soda shop for a treat.  Berk's face cracks me up in this pic

 I got this suit with tons of plans for cute beach pics- but my laziness won and I didn't really take any. Oops.

 Sun beauty

 Got one on my iphone :-)

 I had to post this one- for some reason my sister missed it, she had just drawn all over me- I forget the exact reason, although I do know it had something to do with her campaign for Mazel of the day. Cracks me up!

 Rachel and her sister Ali doing the squat challenge.  I'm pretty sure if I attempted that it would just be a picture of us both laying on the floor.

Such fun times, can't wait to do it again!

14 States, 8 Stops, 3900 Miles

Its taken me almost a month- but I'm getting going on my vacation updates.  If only I had a good 3 weeks to spend just on my pictures on my computer I could get my shutterfly books made for the last 2 years and organize all these vacation pics! Somehow I've been super busy with photography right now so everything of mine is on the back burner for now.

I thought I'd give a little rundown of all the states we passed through. I heard this cute idea of getting a pic of the kids at every state line as we passed through, I thought it would be super cute for the blog and for the vacation book that I will eventually make in the next 3-5 years.  Chris was less thrilled with my idea and loved to give me crap about all the time I was adding to our trip with my stopping and dragging 3 kids out of the car. Whatevs, we have fun memories and stories from the experience.

Here we are as we passed into our first state- we actually pulled to the side of the road here.  Later I would find out that that was impossible to do.

 We pulled into the visitor center here- I think the sign was on the bridge if I remember right?

 The kids were sleeping, and I might be crazy- but not crazy enough to wake these fools up just for a picture.  It was my first attempt at a drive by sign. It was super small and I didn't quite catch it.

 Here's where it got a little bit hairy.  After missing the AL pic (which I was fine with) I really wanted a pic of us in FL since that was where we were spending the most time and the biggest part of our vacation.  According to my driver it was EXTREMELY dangerous to stop on the side of the road for the sign.  I was trying to get a drive by at least but he could only slow down to about 84 mph for my attempt.....I *might* have "gently tossed" my phone to the ground after my failed attempt at getting anything.  (Mind you this is at the end of a full day in the car with 3 kids). Chris pulled over to the visitor center and got us a whole family picture.  Then pointed out that this was even better than the state line- and that I was a jerk.

 After our fun filled week in FL we headed North toward MI.  First stop Alabama- Chris decided to always go to the visitor center from here on because of all the perceived danger ;-) on the roads. 

 Some places had pretty unimpressive visitor signs- this was all we could find.  The kids were very cooperative.  We stayed in Nashville for 3 days having fun with just the 5 of us.

 We spent some time on our way through KY going to Abe Lincoln's birthplace and visiting the Patton Museum.

 It got pretty Dicey in OH.  My cousins have a severe hatred for OH and since we pulled in during rush hour in a huge rainstorm we got off to a pretty rocky start.  We were actually able to make a list of 10 things that we dislike about OH on our way through.  My favorite one was being cut of by a lawn mower in the interstate.  They also have signs all over about a number to call for suspected drug use (must be a pretty big problem there).  Excessive graffiti on bridges was another. We also found out that when major cities are on the state line there isn't a visitor center. None that we could see anyway.  Their sign was hanging over the street instead of on the side so I couldn't get that pic either. Thanks Ohio.

 Welcome to my birthplace!  The weather cooled down just for our arrival- they had been in the high 90's low hundreds, which wasn't really going well with our plan to come to MI for cooler weather and to visit family.  We spent 4 nights in the Detroit area visiting my grandparents, aunts, uncles and most of my cousins.  Then we went to Kalamazoo for a night to visit one of my other cousins.

 A quick pass through another one of my home states- it was raining and it was a quick pass thorough so no pic of the family.

 Another state with their major city on the state line.  Its okay though- because when your city is Chicago I will forgive something like that :-) We spent most of the day and one night here.

 The next morning it was a bright and early send off to try to make it all the way home without stopping for the night.  St Louis is on the state line- so this is what I got.

 I don't know what is excellent about OK.  The only place we could find to stop in the entire state was McDonalds. Yuck.

 WoooHOOO! Hit the TX state line around 10- so I pulled this one from the internet- the kids were all passed out and it was too dark for photography.

 Now for a few of my favorite car pics.  How sweet are they?

 Poor Patton had little to entertain him. He did enjoy being faced forward for the first time and was thrilled about the DVD player.

 Some peek a boo

 You would think I would be happier that they were all asleep- this was after the seemingly day long fight about blankets.  After they fell asleep I gave them all back and covered them up.

 Patton finding ways to entertain himself (notics the blanket that he wouldn't let anyone else have tossed to the side of his carseat?)

 Patton was a pretty big fan of smokes on the trip. We thought it was pretty hilarious- when nothing else would work, I'd pass back a smoke to him and he'd be nice and happy for a bit.  We found a candy store in Chicago before we left, I loaded up on smokes for the drive home.

 He cracks me up! I had 3 pics on this - but apparently I did one twice instead of the other one. Oops.