On The Road Again!: Day 16: Saturday, May 26th- Omaha, Nebraska to Plymouth, Indiana-562 miles~

Today we drove through Nebraska, Iowa, a bit of Illinois and finally, arrived in Indiana. Imagine my delight when 3 of our children asked for their school books! Mercy is finished with math and part of her Language Arts for Tuesday which will make our day a whole lot easier!! We’ll see if we get more accomplished tomorrow as we make the last leg of our journey home. The kids are doing remarkably well considering that the dvd player stopped working days ago and we already listened to the audio version of Holes and the latest episode of 39 Clues. Unfortunately, I can’t find our last audio book (Black Beauty)in the midst of the car clutter. They have been keeping busy with occasional games on my ipod, their game boy ,MP3 players, sleeping, snacking, and reading for short sessions!

Philip drove on the interstate for the first time this vacation. Mark sat in the passenger seat giving direction as needed since highway driving is quite different than tooling around town. Philip did well in spite of the gusty winds which seem to move our van all over the road and the many truckers he had to get around. Yesterday and today I sat in Curtis’ spot to work on a word document to cut and paste to the blog. I’m so glad I kept a detailed journal as all the days run together and there is no way I would have been able to remember what we did on each day!

It seems that each day we have inside jokes arise with different family members...all situations too inappropriate to share on here:) But today we had a good laugh when Mark was walking into the rest stop with his sweatshirt on backwards. We tried to warn him but he didn't hear us as he hurried in...he realized it soon enough and by the time he came back to us he was appropriately attired:)

Today enroute we definitely saw some sort of wildcat dead on the side of the road...Philip was driving so I didn't want to distract him but I'm pretty sure it was a bobcat. Odesco was crestfallen as he has wanted to see one alive since our trip out west last year! We arrived in Plymouth Indiana in the early evening and totally enjoyed our stay in the Holiday Inn Express Suites.

Philip takes the wheel...check out the trees blowing in the wind...it was a blustery day!

Philip is a very safe driver but for some reason Mark feels more secure hanging on! Actually, I think he may do that when I'm behind the wheel too!! :)

Lots of windmills today...reminded me so much of Iowa last summer!

'Command Central'...Curtis kept track of all our spending, searched for the closest and cheapest gas, and booked hotel rooms from this position. I traded seats with him the last few long drives to get caught up on this blog!! He and Mark built this wooden cabinet before our last trip last year.