Home again!

We did it again! We drove 5000+ miles with all our children. This time we were totally boring and left the doubledeckerbuick behind and didn't spend one single night sleeping in the car there or back. So much for Brent's reputation. He actually offered to pay the kids $10 bucks each one night in Cut Bank Montana to drive on and save $80 bucks on a hotel. They refused. We've spoiled them. (If you can call 2 star hotels spoiling.)

So I don't have near the stories that I told after our last trip home to Washington. . . such as 2440 miles in 50 hours with 6 people and . . . one mouse on board.

I guess you could say everything worked like clockwork this time until Fargo, North Dakota. That was the morning we discovered that in the great midnight hotel rush the previous night "someone" (still under debate) had tipped over the cooler of free beef from Grandpa Fielding and it had bled out in our van all night. So from Fargo on we had Dead Cow on Board. We threw out the beef at a rest stop dumpster (after Brent seriously entertained the idea of a spontaneous rest stop barbeque) once we discovered the spill. . . but that wasn't the end of it.

The first day following the bloody beef incident wasn't so bad. It was still fresh. Some of us complained about the stench, but as Caroline pointed out, it was just "meat and meat tastes good."

But by the last day the meat was soooo dead and we were DYING! Brent and I self detailed the van twice thanks to hotel pool towels, baking soda and Febreeze. Let's just I'll take a live mouse on board any day rather than a bloody dead cow.

I am swearing like an englishman today. As in "That was one bloody road trip" and "I am so bloody glad to be out of that bloody van."

So, that's where we have been. Brent got home from Alaska July 11th at 8 p.m, worked all night fixing everything we had broke (the lawn mower, the fans, the AC in the van) in his three week absence, and we were outa there by 8 a.m the next morning.

16 states in 21 days. Just in case you've been wondering about us.

I will post more later. I am in the midst of the worst thing about vacations right now.