Little Traveler

Look what we found in Des Moines.....

We may have eaten there twice--once on the way to Minneapolis and once on the way back. We found a very, very nice mall in West Des Moines that was right off the highway. We stopped there for lunch both times. The food court had many other options, but why would you ever want to eat anywhere other than Chick-fil-A?!

The mall had a huge kiddy play area--put the one in our local mall to shame! Clara went nuts running all over the place. It was hard to get a picture of her standing still.

I was very nervous about how the 7 hour trip would go. It took us 9 hours on the way there because our lunch break was 2 hours. She did really well both ways. She napped about 1.5-2 hours each way. We read books, played with the magna doodle & see & say, colored, ate crayons (thank goodness they are non-toxic) and snacks, and played with stickers. When we had exhausted all of the tricks in the bag of fun, we resorted to the portable DVD player. Another great invention. We used it about the last hour or so of each long stretch. Somehow we forgot the Dora video, but luckily Veggie Tales and Barney did the trick. A couple of times she said, "Out!" and told the DVD played "bye bye." Luckily those were right before we had planned to stop. We stopped twice on the way there, and only ONCE on the way back. We've always stopped twice both ways so we were shocked that we all made it with one stop. We considered stopping more, but since she was content, we just pushed ahead. The play area really helped burn her energy before getting back into the car. What a relief that she travelled well--I knew that would make or break the trip.