660 minutes

Whew. We capped off our week of vacation yesterday with an 11-hour trip back to Lafayette. That's 660 minutes on the road. Ellie really was a trooper!
We adopted one cardinal rule for the long ride back from northern Wisconsin:

• No stopping unless the baby is awake. This resulted in about 90 minutes of Brian and I bouncing in our seats and then fighting about who got to go to the bathroom first when we finally stopped!

Like I said, Ellie did mostly great on the ride. She had three "naps" that got us through much of the trip. We stopped for about 45 minutes for lunch and then an hour for dinner, to give her some time out of the car seat to play. The dogs, who stayed in the car during most of the stops, also should be commended :)
With nearly two hours left in the trip, I think Ellie decided she was done with being in the car. She screamed for close to an hour, and even me riding in back to sing, cluck, rock and play with her did not help. She finally fell asleep again 45 miles from Lafayette. I don't know if we've ever been so happy to pull into our driveway.
Here are a few pics from the happier (i.e. earlier) parts of the drive. Ellie had lots of toys for the ride.
And Radar kept her company, as did I riding in the back seat for two stretches of the drive.
Muzzy was happy when I rode in back, because it freed up some front seat space for her. Although, after she spent 75 percent of the drive trying to get up front (when I was still sitting there and didn't want a dog on my lap)... Muzzy then decided she had to be in the back when I was there with Ellie at the end of the drive. So the final stretch of the drive was Brian as chauffeur in the front and me, Ellie and two dogs (along with several bags of stuff) in the back seat of the Sable. Comfy.We did have so much fun on Ellie's first vacation! I'll post more pictures later... but, sadly, it's back to work for me today while Brian and Ellie are home recouping from the drive on this MLK Day.