Our trip to North Carolina

We started our journey to North Carolina on July 15th. We planned to take 4 days to travel in attempt to make things easier on the kiddos. Our first stop was in our old stomping grounds of Iowa City. We met Brett's friend Julius and his Mom and little brother at a park, had lunch and played for a bit. It was good to see them one last time. Reagan's good buddy Greta's family was on their summer vacation so we didn't get to see them but Reagan has been pen palling back and forth already and is enjoying it. Another neighbor that we'd hope to see came down with a stomach bug and didn't want to expose us so we missed her too.....I'm certain getting the stomach flu would have been a NIGHTMARE!!

Scott's buddy Lamont or Malont, if you ask Brett, stopped by for lunch too. Lamont now works in Scott's old Iowa City office and has since Feb. of 2010. It was fun to get to see him often. I know Scott enjoyed working with him as well.

Our second stop and first over night stop was in Peoria at my Uncle Bob and Aunt Diane's. They graciously let us stay the night at their place since it was along the way. My three cousins and their kiddos came over for a BBQ. It was good to see them all and the kids had a blast playing. Here is a picture of Brett with Devron and Ethan.

Reagan and Taylor are the same age and enjoyed playing as well. They naturally went right to the make up....as you can see!!

Here's their crazy pose. Silly girls.

Here's I am with Bob and Diane's girls, my cousins, Laurie, Ashley, and Bobbi. A super huge thanks to Diane and Bob for letting us come stay and for dinner and breakfast in the morning!!

Our next destination was Louisville, Kentucky home of the Louisville Slugger. I had promised Brett months ago that it would be one of our stops along the way to North Carolina. I found a kennel to watch the dog while we did the tour and we were on track.........but not for long. We needed dry ice and couldn't find it anywhere so we settled for real ice for the time being. As we approached Louisville I realized I forgot to account for the time change after Indianapolis...oops. This put us in a ringer as the kennel would be closed before we could complete the tour of the bat plant not to mention put us even later to our overnight location, Lexington.

As you can see we made it work and survived the GPS not knowing where to go. Buddy hung out in the Suburban and was fine. Luckily the parking area was a ramp and it was shaded. We did the tour and enjoyed it very much. I'm so glad we stopped.

Reagan with The Babe.

The big kids testing out some old time bats.

It's not "thee" pine tar bat, but it's one of George Brett's bats.

Brett holding a billet...trunks of trees are cut in lengths then out of each length they core out 6 or 8 billets. The billets are what get sent to Louisville to be put on the machine to be made into a bat. The tour didn't allow pictures so this is as much of the story as I can tell. We were happy that they were actually making bats that day. It was pretty cool.

At the end we each got a mini Louisville Slugger, we opted for four vs. six! Six weapons is all I could see!! Anywho a good time and a nice break from driving.

We got back on the road only to hit a major traffic jam....not a pretty scene.....styrofoam cooler broke, meat thawing and wrapping is getting soggy.....angry husband and um, oh, the ac went out in my truck and it was making a strange squeaking sound. Yippee! The joys of travel. When the alternate route was jammed too we opted to stop at Wal Mart and get a new hard cooler and transfer the meat....still no dry ice, but at least water wasn't leaking all over. We had to call Scott's cousin in Lexington and tell them we would be getting in there to late to see them that night so we moved our scheduled BBQ to lunch time the next day. Traffic finally thinned and we were on our way....again. We rolled into our hotel in Lexington around 10pm. Loaded the meat with ice again and found food for our starving children and went to bed. We spent the better half of the next morning looking for the damn dry ice again.....finally found some.....paid way to much for it probably but whatever, it's done, meat is no longer a worry....I'm sorry I was talked into bringing the meat with us for as much of a pain as it was, geesh.

Anywho we made it to Luke and his girlfriend Brooke's apartment complex by noon and grilled and swam and had a great few hours with them.

Reagan, Brooke, Luke and Brett in the pool. The kids were SO happy to not only see Luke but to swim.

The babes got in on the fun too. Here's Luke and Brady playing. So sweet.

Me and Addison. Daddy got to sit this one out.

Reagan, Luke and Brady. We were so glad that we could meet up with them. We grilled burgers and hot dogs and got to hang out which was perfect.

After leaving Lexington, KY around 2 pm we knew we had nearly 10 hours left of driving. We plopped in our books on cd and drove to Greensboro where we found another Red Roof Inn (they gladly accept pets). We got a good nights sleep, got breakfast on the road in the morning and drove three hours to New Bern! The kids and I went to the store to grab some milk and TP while Scott got the keys from the realtor. We were home.