Road Trip!!!....this is kinda long

    So my sister, Heather, had a brilliant idea to let AJ and I borrow their truck wile they are going to be living in Germany. 
     So on very short notice, last Thursday, I flew to North Carolina. I was so excited. I made sure to wear my neoprene knee brace instead of the one with metal supports for faster security clearance. I get to the checkpoint and duh, forgot to take off my boots, and sweater.  After I did the taking my boots off dance I walk through the metal detector. Beep Beep Beep..."Oh, maybe my necklace" I ask the guy. "Maybe" he says. I take it off and go again BEEP BEEP BEEP..."Mame anything in your pockets?" I flip them inside out to show fast nothing there..."A belt?" I tell him "no" Then, light bulb, I say "it can't be my knee brace could it?" Sure enough he says "it most definitely is, step to the side while I get someone to check you out" Great. So I stand to the side, my stuff waiting on the belt, hoping no one takes anything. The lady comes over checks my hair, my bra, my pant lining, my waistband, my socks, then asks "can you pull your jeans over your brace or do we need to go in the other room" Oh no...I'll get it....give me a min to pry it, I am NOT going in another room.  So as I am pulling my pants up as hard as I can to expose the knee brace (slightly wishing I would have shaved my legs) she finally puts her fingers up and in to make sure I'm not toting anything in my knee...finally I am cleared. 
      I get to my gate and I patiently awaited my boarding zone. Finally, the last zone called was mine. I am slightly cheap so I decided to not pay to check my bag. I packed very light, a small bag with three to four days worth of clothes, and essentials, including a car DVD player for my ride. In my other bag "my purse" was my TK Primer book, my Bible, a few magazines, and some more essentials. I have mad packing skills so I crammed as much as I could in these two small bags. In my excitement of boarding the plane I didn't see how small this plane was....or notice the fact that my seat was THE LAST row! So scooting past in the smallest isle ever with my two slightly heavy and awkward bags, I hear myself saying "sorry" and "excuse me" about a hundred times. Finally, I get to my seat. Sweet an isle..whoo hoo. As I sit and buckle the older gentleman next to me goes to ask me something....I thought for sure he was gonna ask for the isle. "excuse me" he says, "would you possible be willing to switch with my wife so we may sit together?" I have seen this in movies, then I am stuck sitting in a very uncomfortable or awkward seat...."yes that's fine" I reply. I find her seat and sit by the window...yay (fake yay). They announce they are shutting the door...sweet I get the whole seat to myself. I stretch a leg but a hitch hiking flight attendant who must have been moody sits down and gives me "the look". BUT I feel good because I did something selfless and nice for someone else. SO after a ride in this dinky plane that sounded pretty worn, I arrive in Chicago.
    Booking it to my next gate, I stop at the only place to grab a bite without a long line, pretzel bites. So I wait, and wait....finally last boarding zone called again. This time I am in one of the front rows yay. I go to flip my bags in the overhead (no seat in front of me) but to my surprise this plane, if possible, is smaller than the first. My bag, which as considerably smaller than A LOT of others, did not fit! Me still not wanting to check my bags, frantically trying to take stuff out of one and put in another before the flight attendant sees and makes me check it....finally I get it to SQUEEZE. So I feel pretty lucky to have an isle seat with a little leg room. The only thing is right where my leg space begins, the isle path does a slight slanted direction change so my feet are now past the yellow line ( without stretching them out) so instead of just telling me she gets on the intercom right in front of me and says "If your feet are past the yellow line please tuck them in" Yay, this will be comfy. So I try to slant them inward but they are now taking up the leg space designated for the rather large guy next to me. Then to my surprise, they actually had a cart small enough for the smallest isle I have now ever seen. As they start it seems fine till they come to my part here the isle veers to the right so now in the turbulence I am hoping they don't loose control or I will be smashed by this crappy drink cart. They say if you want a drink you must put your tray down. Yeah hi...I don't have one...oh wait, I do folded up in the arm of my seat. So I cleverly watch the guy next to me and follow. I pull it out unfold it....but the middle where it folds doesn't secure itself so it is just a floppy tray folding itself in half while kinda resting on my lap....good enough if it gets me a soda I guess. Anyway, we land I get my stuff and have to exit down the stairs onto the tarmac and back up some stairs inside.
     Hobbling as fast as I can across the airport to my next gate taking a few escalators, and people movers....finally from B zone to E zone...E 18 is my gate (in Charlotte NC) I half run half limp off the people mover when someone says "hey get on" a guy with a golf cart. I tell him I think I'm real close it's ok. He asks where my gate is and he laughs and says "get on" so I do and he says " you still think it's close?" after a five min ride. He drops me off as they are starting to board. whew. Thank you NC airport cart driver guy. So I get on my last flight...again ALL the way in the very last row. AGAIN my stuff won't fit...like my planes went from little, to even smaller to world's smallest. This one actually scared me at take off and landing. The whole plane not only shook but jerked and knocked...thank goodness for seat belts. It didn't help the fact that there were two (that I saw) seats that had signs "out of order, do not sit" on them!
   FINALLY Fayettville NC. I found Heather and we got to her house at about midnight, or one. We slept for a few hours and woke up to get ready and eat lunch with Elias at his school. He was so surprised. He was so happy to sit and talk and eat his lunch with Heather and I. He was even cool enough to give mom and aunt Kelly hugs in  front of his friends :) Then we waited for Vanessa to have lunch. She too was super excited. Right when she walked in she started to talk to us, but the lunch Nazi came and told her she can't talk for ten min. Apparently it is the rule so kids will actually eat, so we had to take her to a different table so she could talk. After that we went to Alex's school and pulled him out early. He was really excited too. We went home to get Max and the twins and went to walmart for a min. Then the kids got home from school and it was out for ice cream and miniature golf. Then we went out for dinner. Super yummy. Not much time with the kids but it was nice. I played apples to apples with them, they are so silly. And Alex showed me the show wipe out....I was crying I was laughing so hard.  We went to bed around 1 am and woke up at 5:30.
   At 6:00 we said our goodbyes and we were off. We went to SC first...a bit confusing, especially when we had no real idea of what the route was just going by GPS. Then back into the corner of NC. Then I think it was TN where we stopped to look at Heather's OTHER house, then KY, a min in IN and then Il. In Illinois we just happened to stop in metropolis, where we found out is the home of superman. SO at like 10:00 pm we decide to hurry and find this giant statue of superman to pretend like we took our time and sight saw along the way when really we were booking it as fast as we could. So we end up in what looks like a really seedy part of town, taking a five min detour to take a few cheesy pics, as cars are FLYING through the ally by this statue...like they spotted the dumb tourists who decided to be there that late and they were gonna mug us or something. So we packed it up fast and got back to the task at hand...getting to Utah.
    Then we hit MO. Well we hit it a few times I guess we kept going on the boarder. In St. Louis I had to stop for gas and bathroom really bad. So i get off the freeway. Only there are no gas stations. Just high rises and city buildings. So I finally find one and I can't pull back out of the parking lot fast enough. And what do I see across the street by a SUPER SEEDY building? A van that reads ST. LOUIS CITY PROJECTS.  Wrong part of town to try to get gas. So we finally find a decent place a few miles up the road and get back to our travels.
    Nebraska. Now this would have been a cool state to visit as I have a good friend who lives in Nebraska. If I would have known the GPS was taking us this way. So when we hit it, it is too late to try to figure where she lives or if it is close to where we are. I commend her for living there.  It is desolate! We were on a road that was 50 miles with no inlets or "exits" or connecting roads. No houses, no trees, not even corn!!!! We had already been up for twenty four hours by this point, so we had to switch every hour because we were dying of boredom.  There was a store or something that looked like a covered wagon (we didn't stop there, we were kinda tired of sight seeing by this point). There was a dinosaur, the wagon store, a water tower that looked like a hot air balloon, and a tee pee...all randomly placed within a few miles of each other. We also stopped at a gas station in these few miles that had a house made of sod, and a buffalo, horse, and Indian made of barb wire...these we did see since they were in the same parking lot. Then off for another however many hours.  We spent a little over twelve hours in that state! Oh did I mention I got pulled over for swerving in my lane...he thought I was drunk. Heather leans over and says "It's not her truck, she isn't used to it, I was just sleeping and she is driving for me." the cop probably thought...I'm asking her...can she not speak for herself? haha....good times...no ticket. :)
    We actually cheered when we hit WY. This was the last leg of the journey. On the boarder we saw a huge statue of  Jesus. Again a whole lot of nothing, but at least there were rocks, houses, snow...stuff to look at. Plus, I knew we were almost to UT. After entering Utah and going down Parleys canyon, it was dark. Tons of truckers were passing us (doing 70 mph). This canyon road was seriously dark too. Well I get in the fast lane and pass some trucks. When all of a sudden the smallish car in front of me swerves as if to miss hitting something. So I and struggling to see what might be in the road, when me and heather see what looks like dust or small glass particles or something. Still trying to see what I am about to hit, out of nowhere the guy finally slams on his brakes and does a dead stop in the fast lane. I barely had enough time to swerve and miss him, praying there were no big rigs in the lane next to  me. Not being able to feel my legs I just went straight off the exit that happened to be right there. I let the adrenaline calm down and called 911 to report the guy who hit something and was dead stopped in the fast lane. Praying he would not get hit by one of the trucks going over 70. I have no clue what happened to them. God was definitely watching over our travels though.
    Finally we made it home about 11:30 or so. Not a min too soon. 44 hours straight with nothing more than a few hours of naps collectively throughout the trip was a little much. I spent a fun few days with heather, shopping and talking. Watching movies and dying hair....me red, her pink. It was definitely much needed sister time. I can't wait to see her this summer (hopefully, crossing fingers) I am going to miss her SO much!!!!! I can't believe she will be gone a whole four years. Hopefully when they get back they will live closer so I can have my turn to be the cool aunt!