Day 1431. Emmy was sleeping on the floor in the other room where his siblings were on beds, but joined us in bed for a while. We had said we'd come join them for breakfast at 8 am, so we got up at about 7 am, then walked over to their home. There was lots of food and lots of children there, and we joined them at the table, enjoying the fellowship with them. Then everyone went outside, where the kids went on the trampoline, while Randy and I returned to our room to finish packing up. I then returned to the kids, while he loaded the car up. They got to go look at the chickens again, and even saw an egg a chicken had literally just laid. They also got a chicken out for the kids to pet.
After Randy had pulled up with the loaded car, our friend suggested we'd take a group picture, and we did. Then we said our good-byes and drove off at 10 am for our next leg of this trip west, the fourth day in a row of driving. We first drove south to Indianapolis, then turned west to drive to St. Louis, where we were going to spend the night. After 2.5 hours we stopped at a Chick-Fil-A that had a playground, much to the kids' delight. Sammy had been looking forward to playing. And so Randy went inside the play area with the kids, while I ordered the food, then sat down to wait for it. I was organizing it all, when they came running to eat. They were hungry today and ate pretty well, then went back inside the playground.
We left at 2 pm, after 90 minutes, and continued on our way. They know it's nap time after lunch, and I encouraged them to sleep, and today it worked better than it has been. All three fell asleep rather quickly. However, Sammy only slept about 10 minutes, which is quite typical for him. After waking up, they all got their tablets back to play.
We had to avoid a road closure/traffic jam on the interstate, then returned to I-70. We stopped briefly for me to go to the bathroom, and that was the first time that the heat really hit me. It was 37 degrees Celsius. I had planned to stop at a playground with them, but it was way too hot for that. We decided to go straight to the Walmart closest to our destination. We got there after 2 hours of driving, at 4 pm.
We had run out of most items, so it was time to stock up. All three went into the cart, then we pushed them in and walked from aisle to aisle to pick the stuff up. All in all it took us 45 minutes. It was a challenge getting everything into our full car, but at 4:40 we continued on our way.
We had one hour left to go to reach our hotel, but we also stopped for gas. At 6 pm we reached our hotel on the other side of Saint Louis, but of course we had entered another time zone, so it was really 7 pm for our bodies. It was a Super 8 hotel, the cheapest around there, with all the other hotels being much more expensive. But it had breakfast included and also had a pool, which is now a must-have. We checked in and went to our room, where the kids wanted to turn the TV on, while we were waiting for Randy to unload the car and bring everything inside. They were also hungry, and so we started eating the chicken and peas and stuff that we had bought. After Randy had eaten as well, we all got ready to go to the pool, where we were the only ones there the whole time we were in there.
The pool was a decent size, and the water not cold. The kids enjoyed jumping into the water from the edge of the pool, and Sammy had lots of fun swimming, and also with the ball. They were all doing so well swimming, that I reduced the number of swim rings by one. Tammy and Emmy had one on each arm, while Sammy had two each, and they were all still doing just great.
We stayed in the water for a long time, but left when Tammy needed to go to the bathroom. We showered off and put their pj's on, then we all still had icecream. I read them a bedtime story, prayed for them and put them to bed. Even with the time difference it ended up being 9 pm, which was later than planned. We had queen-sized beds, and so all three shared one, lying next to each other and not complaining. I sang for them to fall asleep, and soon they did.
I turned my computer on to work on the pictures, but had some internet issues that I could only resolve after a trip ot the receptionist much later. It all took time, and so it's after 1 am once again, and once again my eyes have been falling shut. The other four have been asleep for hours, and I'm about to join them, even though there is so much I should do.
