over the river and through the woods

Yesterday morning, we got up early, loaded up the van and headed to Ponca City to pick up Uncle Casey, Aunt Rae and Elia so that we could FINALLY make our way to Connecticut for Christmas! Before our trip we "decked out" the van in its very own Christmas "outfit"...can you see it!?!? The mini van looks like rudolph!

After we picked up the Johnson clan we headed to get gas and some lunch for the road but in the meantime we let the kids further decorate the van with some Christmas themed window clings! No, they didn't make it the entire trip (most of them ended up in wads on the floor) but it was fun to do and cute to look at for awhile anyway!

It didn't take long before the "road" got the best of all of us. The kids were all suited up with their headphones watching movies while us grown ups took turns driving and either helping the kids or trying to sneak in a quick snooze when it wasn't our driving shift. We entertained ourselves with Christmas music on the radio, Christmas trivia cards and the most important traveling hobby...SNACKING!!!

It was very exciting, after driving all night Sunday night, to wake up to snow Monday morning! When we made our first stop before dawn Monday morning we were in Ohio and not only was there snow on the ground but the snow was still falling!! How beautiful...and exciting!!

Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! As we drove through Pennsylvania we were very excited to see that we would be driving close to Scranton! If you don't know, there is a show on TV called "The Office" and it is set in the town of Scranton, PA. It is a very funny sitcom that mine and Rae's friends all love! How cool to drive right past this town! We really wanted to stop and take a picture with the actual "Welcome to Scranton" sign but by the time we passed Scranton we were getting so close to Grandpa and Grandma's house that we just couldn't veer off our course...maybe next time...

(BIG sigh of relief!) Now we are at Grandpa and Grandma's house in Connecticut, the boys are already snoozing in their new sleeping bags and Brandon and I are about to go to bed ourselves! We made really really good time on our drive. The total miles was supposed to take us about 25 hours and we drove the entire trip in around 28 hours! The kids did awesome and only began to get restless about 30 minutes to an hour outside of town! We couldn't have asked for better! I can't wait to share our next week's memories! Keep checking back!!!!