Last week, our family departed Chicago in a caravan of two cars en route to our new home in Marin County, California. The boys were in one car and the girls (plus our token boy Wally the dog) in the other.
The journey was almost exactly 2,400 miles and I can state with certainty that it is something that both Dylan and I will remember forever. While it is never ideal to drive 10 hours a day, every day for almost four days straight, we kind of had a blast.
As anyone with a tween will tell you, an almost-12-year-old is a moody creature, prone to outbursts and eye rolls for really no reason at all. We had virtually none of that on this trip. I let Dylie sit up front with me and she was awesome. She played DJ, switching between Sirius/XM and my iphone (a mixture of Spotify and my iTunes library). She took photos and uploaded them to Instagram and Facebook, dutifully hashtagging each one with our #wileysgowest hashtag (see the full set here).
When the scenery became monotonous and the trip threatened to bore us out of our minds, she came up with inventive ways to shake things up. We spent one memorable hour listening to her favorite songs from preschool and she even let me escape Hits One on XM a few times with some fun runs on Classic Vinyl and the Grateful Dead station. I was even permitted to sing at the top of my lungs to "Me and Bobby McGee."
We also managed to choreograph a seated, one armed (I needed at least one hand on the wheel) dance routine to "Blurred Lines," which we heard approximately 8,642 times.
The picture above was taken at Wall Drug in South Dakota on our second night. It perfectly summarizes the fun and easy attitude that my Dylie Bean had throughout the whole trip. Love that girl.
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