Karen and I have been lucky when it comes to taking the kids on a long trip. Karen was smart when Jonathan and Andrew were young to be creative in entertaining them with new gifts they could play with. To mark the event time for the gift she chose crossing the state boarders as the time for the new gift. This kept the boys busy and eager to enter into the next state. Now that the boys are teenagers we still take long trips. They now know how to entertain themselves with their own toys. The boys either listen to CDs, watch DVDs or play games on their Gameboys.

We recently drove a 12 hour trip without hassel and then later that week added another 5 hours. The trip home was interesting because of stop and go on the interstate freeway for about two hours. We decided to stop earlier in miles than we normally would have making the remaining trip longer. The next day the alternator went out causing the van to coming to a halt near a small rural town about one and a half hours away from home. A person who lived near the area stopped to see if he could help and ended up giving us the number of a local shop he trusted. We spent that night in another motel waiting until the van could be repaired the next day; everyone was upset to not be home when we expected.