the BIG finale!

We had one final stop to make in Riverside, Ca. It had been such a long trip and we were so close to home, I honestly almost did away with it. It wasn't one of the most exciting stops I thought and I didn't really want to end on a dud. Unfortunately though, our previous stop had been the paper cup. Not really a finale winner either, so ultimately we stopped for our final "California Must-see."

Yup- it's a chair! President Taft's chair actually. If you aren't very familiar with history, I'll remind you that President Taft was our fattest president. Meaning. . . he needed a really fat chair to sit in!

And there we have it. The BIG roadtrip was finally complete. It took us a bit over an hour to get home after that. Though we had many fun adventures, and saw many amazing and cool things. . . our stops were just the half of it! I mentioned very little of the actual road trip. . . the hours, upon hours, and days upon days that we sat in the car going from one stop to the other.

I had somewhat worried that it would be a crazy trip. Kids would get bored. . . and adults would get annoyed. But this trip proved quite otherwise. We planned so many car trip activities, that most of the time actually flew on by. We had computers with DVD players, we listened to a whole book on tape, played madlibs, battleship, and hangman. Aubs made bracelets and Cayd played his little game system. We ate snacks and had long discussions about what we needed to do to OUR houses, to get us on the map for people to come visit (don't ask!). And we ALL participated in the great License Plate frenzy game.
The picture shows the winner of that one.

The final car picture I took makes me laugh, because it was not only til we were 40 minutes away from home that Aubrey finally passed out in the car. Besides that, no car napping the entire way! Something I very much did NOT expect.

So here is to a great roadtrip. . . and for the year ahead to plan the next grans adventure!