Family Road Trip - Day 1

Wayne's mom & dad are originally from Missouri, so naturally has a lot of family still living there. The last time we went back there, I was 7 months pregnant with Kya, so needless to say it was time to go back.  The kids were especially excited, because they have never been out of California and now they were about to add 9 more states to that count.

Wayne and I woke up at 1:30am to shower and hoped to be out of the house by 2:00am.  Of course, things don't always go as plan and we didn't leave until 2:30am, which really isn't all that much later.  But then 15 minutes down the road, just as we were about to get on the freeway, he remembers he forgot his wallet.  So we turned around to head home and get it and were finally on our way by 3:00am.  Thankfully he remembered 15 minutes in versus a few hours.

About 6:30am we crossed over into our first state, Arizona.  We thought it would be fun to document our trip by taking pictures with each state's sign.

Our first stop was in Kingman, AZ for gas and breakfast. We have always heard good things about Cracker Barrel, so we decided that would be a great place to have breakfast. We were not disappointed! The food was delicious homemade style, the prices were cheap, the service was amazing, the people were the nicest I have ever encountered and the restaurant and attached general store was super cute. There was definitely a few things I would have like to purchase for my home there.

I loved the large porch filled with southern style rocking chairs and checker board games.  If they ever get a waiting line, these are a great way to kill the time waiting.

Hanging out in their famous rocking chairs.  Oh, how I wished we had a Cracker Barrel in CA near us!

After breakfast and playing a few games of checkers while Wayne made some phone calls, we hit the road again. At this time I brought out the snack bags I had made for the kids and bags of entertainment (bible activity books, crayons, tic-tac-toe, bingo, etc).  As we drove, Wayne and I checked out some of the beautiful county side and even found a few towns in AZ that we wouldn't mind living in.  Who knew that Arizona had such a country flair!?!?

After a long day of driving, we finally entered into New Mexico.  Wayne thought I was nuts for making us pull over for each sign, until two other vehicles did the same thing in NM.   Ha ha!

We had big plans when we got to Albuquerque, like checking out Old Town, getting a traditional NM dinner and climbing up to check out the Petroglyphs.  Unfortunately, we were so tired and the kids had so much energy to burn, that we chose to stay at our hotel.  The kids literally bounced from bed to bed, as this was their first time in a hotel and having been in a van for 13 hours they had LOTS of energy to burn.

All Kya talked about the entire trip was how she couldn't wait to get to New Mexico and go swimming in a hotel pool....she last all of 10 minutes before she was freezing and ready to get out.  Ha ha!  So while the others swam, she and I headed out to pick up McDonald's, which we ate poolside before heading into the showers and bed.

Stayed tuned for day 2 of our family road trip!