Day 2: Pasco, WA to Meridian, ID

Wednesday was a long day of driving for the kids: 5 hours with a Popsicle stop in the middle. All our stops in Oregon are on our way back so it was straight shooting that day. So far our impressions of eastern Oregon: looks like Simi Valley!

We've been having some technical difficulties, folks: the last two campgrounds' wifi has been down (Luddites!). We'll see what my trusty little phone can pull off!

(Start from bottom for the start of day)

Getting ready for bed. The sisters are starting to really like each other - the girls fight over who gets to hold "We-yee" and Lily will call to them to get their attention. Plus stalking them. She stalks them like crazy.

He's a big fan of independence now.

Lily really likes to roll around and plop onto bed covers. It causes the most amazing static cling...

Dinner! I swear I can never get all four to look at the same time.

Not the best place for a picnic but it was nearly dinner time. Babies had rocks. Mmm rocks.

Cement factory

Feels like some kind of weird posed modern art.

This was a long driving day, so when we hit a rest stop about half way we decided to pull out the popsicles. Definitely worth a treat!

Lily after happily eating her PBJ. Holy moly.

Lily eating a PBJ

Happy Theo bug :)

To quote Dave, "Man it's gorgeous here."

On the road again!

This way there's plenty of floor food for later!

How the babies eat breakfast

Daddy giving them the walkthrough of the day

Still peacefully sleeping....

Day 1: We're on our way!

After much packing (so much packing!) we have finally left the house! The girls are excited; the babies less so. To be fair we left right at bedtime - 10 minutes in they were already asleep.

Dave testing out Theo's aerodynamics:

"Mom! It's so big!...where will I sleep?"

Lily is more interested in the foliage than packing.

And we're off! Avy, looking worriedly at the darkening sky: "Mom, it's getting dark so it's almost bedtime, you need to tuck me in." Oh my dear, we are so many miles from tucking-in.

Our fearless leader!

Even at night it's pretty.

Random lake.

This is 9+pm at this point. Ellie is thrilled to still be up.. Avy less so.

More random lake.

We made it! Only a little adventure - poor Avy got car sick. She was very chipper about it though and we got everything all cleaned up. Here we are making up the beds and getting everyone ready for them!

A bit like a sleep over ;)

So we made it! Tomorrow we'll head out to Boise. No planned stops on the way and given the late (way late) bedtimes for everyone we'll probably take the morning slow. Who knows? There's a pool....

Maelstrom of packing

We're starting to finalize our packing list and get things together... RV packing is so much different from any other packing. Bring all the clothes! Bring all the bikes! Bring all the kids! ..Books! I mean books! :)

I've been slowly assembling our activities box for this past month and I think I'm ready (I really hope I'm ready!). Behold:

Starting at the top left, clockwise:

• Binders with coloring pages, alphabet games, mazes, blank faces, and a map so we can track our progress. Teacher's binder is the giant blue one propping them up (I printed out the internet for that thing).
• Audio books on CD
• Berenstain bears collection (girls love the series, these they haven't read)
• Audio books with picture books
• Kids' kindles with headphones: these have more animated books, a couple seasons of Daniel Tiger downloaded, some of their favorite YouTube series (How It's Made!), and some preschool games
• Brain Quest cards for Pre-K and K
• Playdough (tools not shown but definitely included)
• Ladybug counting game
• (directly above) Bug catcher + magnifier
• Capital/lower case alphabet puzzle
• Mini globe: so we can continue our geography classes
• Magnetic shapes and puzzle cards
• CD players for audio books
• Puzzle sticks. These have pictures of the girls glued onto sticks then cut up for fun matching
• Rhyme puzzles (shark/park, cat/hat, etc)
• Geometric puzzle sticks. Velcro dots on the sticks so the kids can put together as many weird shapes as they want.
• Spelling box
• MORE BOOKS - these are actually ours
• MORE BOOKS - on Brazil (our newest country), yoga (they want to join me), sticks (sticks are cool), and a random other assortment based on things they've expressed interest in recently.
• School books: math, reading, logic, geography and anatomy

Whew! And that doesn't include the stuff we're bringing for when we're not driving: kites, bug/bottles, pump rockets... the girls are going to have a blast.

For the babies we have fewer new things, but we're trying to time our driving to match their naps so that makes sense. Also, anything is a toy to them.

It seems like a lot but I'm planning to split the activities in half so they get new stuff on our way back home too. It's so nice to have goals... ;)