way up nort'

Early in the year, I thought that my contract specifically didn't allow the use of personal days on the day before or after a major holiday -- which made life slightly interesting, since we were headed to my in-laws in Wausau, WI for Thanksgiving.

Leo and Kirstin have been under the weather all week, and they both stayed home on Tuesday. Yesterday, we took him to school and then had Kirstin drop me off at my school. A colleague of mine (to whom I owe something homemade, yummy, and lactose-free) was incredibly nice and stepped in to cover the last 15 minutes of my last class of the day, and we were leaving Centennial a little after 3:00. While Kirstin and Leo were waiting, they had a long discussion about how he didn't want to be buckled in and how he didn't want to go visit. That persisted for a while, and I think some of it stemmed from no nap and forgetting to pack a snack.

Kirstin drove the first 3.5 hours (from Champaign to Beloit), where we stopped to eat dinner. Leo had a great time at one point saying "down the hill and turn left at the stoplight." I'm not sure where he thought he was directing us to, but it was fun to hear.

One of our practices for a very long time has been to check out audiobooks for longer drives (roughly, anything more than about 3 hours each way). This time, we had Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. We hardly even have the first disc playing when Leo starts complaining, "I don't like this story." How can our son not like Harry Potter?!?!?! In the end, we ended up driving most of the way with the radio off, aside from about two hours of the stretch Kirstin drove, where Leo finally nodded off to sleep.

He snoozed a little bit after dinner, but was awake and quiet for most of it. I finished the drive, and managed to get us into Wausau a little after 10:00 (maybe closer to 10:15). We get things unloaded, and Leo decides he's still hungry. When he sits down at Marge's kitchen table, he proudly announces, "I want to do some eggs." (In reference to Easter egg decorating when last we were here.)

It took a long time to convince him to go to sleep after all the time he spent in the car. Fortunately, he slept until sometime after 7:30 this morning.