Today we were up bright and early again. Nothing new. Both kids were up and raring to go around 6:15 again. I was a bit surprised because I thought Kenzie might try to sleep in some. She had a sort of rough night. She doesn't remember it, but she whined in her sleep every few minutes most of the night. I tried to wake her up a couple of times but she never woke up enough to stop the whining. She would cry out in her sleep like she was upset and I would jump up to see what was going on to realize she was still asleep and probably just having a bad dream. She doesn't recall any bad dreams but who knows.
Anyway, both kids woke up and snuggled us a few minutes before we decided to start getting ready for our day. We went down to the lobby and had breakfast. The kids didn't eat as well this morning as they did yesterday but at least we got some food in them. After breakfast we packed up most of our things and rearranged some things so we wouldn't have to bring in as many bags from this point on. I do think though that even when we get to the point that we only have clothing in one of the kids' suitcases that we will have to bring them all in just because the kids love to pull them along.
We took the kids down to the pool when it opened at 9am to let them swim for a bit. Neither of us decided to get in as we were already ready for the day but the kids enjoyed a half hour of swim time or so before we had to get packed up the rest of the way and hit the road.
It wasn't too long before we were out the door and on our way. Kenzie read a couple of books while we drove out loud to Will. It was pretty sweet of her. He loves being read to and it is so nice that Kenzie can read to him some now as she loves reading... so that works out well.
Pensacola is really close to the Florida/Alabama state line so it wasn't long before we were waving goodbye to Florida and saying hello to Alabama. We decided to stop at the visitor's center just after entering Alabama on I-10. This was the same visitor's center that I mentioned yesterday where Nana and I spent quite some time cleaning Will following a blowout some 3 years ago. I'm super thankful that today's stop was much easier... and cleaner. We really stopped mainly to get a picture of Kenzie and Will with the Sweet Home Alabama sign. We also have one from 3 years ago with all four of us that I will have to dig up one of these days.
We all took a bathroom break, the kids picked up some reading material about random things in Alabama aka brochures that are really just going to be trashed sooner rather than later and we were on our way again. The drive into Mobile was pretty uneventful. We saw the USS Alabama as we were on I-10 about to go into the tunnel when Waze randomly routed us off I-10 and onto a bypass route that neither Steven nor I knew. Steven has made the drive into Mississippi (hereafter only referred to as MS because "Mississippi" takes too long to type) a couple of times and I have done in many times but we have never done this before. The kids weren't super happy to miss the tunnel in Mobile, Steven wasn't super happy that I didn't know more to know what on earth we were getting ourselves into getting off the interstate, and I was mad that I was supposed to know more to know what on earth we were getting ourselves into getting off the interstate... but didn't. There was some yelling. Kenzie told us to not yell. Will went to sleep to ignore our yelling and eventually we figured it out. We think maybe the traffic through Mobile must have been bad and our bypass eventually took us back to Moffet Road or US 98 and we were back on track. The downfall was that we missed any opportunity to eat lunch basically. We drove and drove... and drove trying to find food. Eventually we crossed into MS.
There was NOTHING along the road all the way in as far as we could see on our map. Finally we saw a sign telling us to turn left if we wanted to visit Downtown Lucedale and there was a sign for a hospital. I told Steven to turn left and we would give them 3 miles. If we didn't find anything by 3 miles we would turn around and I would start feeding the kids goldfish and gummies to tide them over until we found something. A mile passed... nothing. 1.5 miles and still nothing. Finally at 2 miles or so, we saw civilization. We also found a Pizza Hut and elected to stop there. It was during the week so we were able to get the buffet. The good news was that they didn't charge us for the kids... and the kids barely ate so no money was probably lost on their end for that. The bad part was that it was obvious we weren't part of the local crowd and the server downright ignored us. She walked right by our table a couple of times and asked tables on either side of us if they needed anything but wouldn't even make eye contact with us. Granted, it was a buffet but she never even offered us refills or anything. I practically had to tackle her to ask her if we could get to go drinks as we left and even then she didn't seem like she cared to help us. Is Southern hospitality dead? I don't know. Although I will say that as we left a large family came in and Steven held the door for them. Each one of them said thank you. So maybe it was just that particular woman. After lunch we settled into the car and started Moana for the kids. The ended up watching it almost the entire remainder of the drive to our hotel. We hit some significant rain a couple of times just before the hotel and it was raining when we got to the hotel which seems to be our pattern on this trip. We checked in quickly and got somewhat settled in our room (which was nice as the hotel is recently remodeled and really clean and nice) before turning around to head out to my Grandmother's house to visit for a bit before we had to go to dinner.
We made it to Grandma's house (Grammy from this point forward so as not to confuse her with Steven's mom aka Grandma to the kiddos) and were able to see my Uncle John too. He couldn't go to dinner with us so I'm so glad he was able to make it to her house so we could visit for a bit. The kids loved seeing her house and petting her doggies.
We were able to visit a bit and then loaded all of us and Grammy into the car to head to dinner. My Aunt coordinated everything to have a lot of my family and Momma #2 (my own mom's bff) have dinner with us. We met at this super cool restaurant that looked like a barn and played worship music videos while you ate dinner. Any restaurant with Hillsong and Elevation Worship playing in the background is fine by me. When Ms. Barbara told me that the restaurant had a huge cross in the parking lot and I couldn't miss it, I thought maybe she was exaggerating. She wasn't. It had a yummy buffet full of all foods that MS does well including fried catfish, a lot of other calorie laden foods, and dessert. The fried green tomatoes and pecan pie were to die for. It was all really yummy. And the company was even better.
We were able to chat with family and catch up some. The two or so hours we were there went too quick and eventually everyone had to head out as most people work tomorrow and we have another day of our trip ahead of us. I'm so glad we were all able to get together. It was a bit of added time to drive into Jackson and back out but it was more than worth it. The kids had a blast seeing everyone and basically meeting them all over again because the last time we saw anyone was 3 years ago.
Our time with the family went really quickly and we were back in the hotel getting ready for bed before we knew it. Tonight is the one night of our trip with two queen beds rather than a king and a sofa bed so we told the kids they could sleep with us. I don't think Will got the memo though and he assumed his bed was for him and his guys. I guess I'm supposed to bunk with someone else or something.
After today we officially checked off our second and third states on our America the Beautiful bag. =)
And tomorrow we will mark off one more. We are pretty excited for New Orleans. Should be fun!
Day 3 - Done!
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