Mary, being some combination of crazy and a saint, all by herself, came up with the plan: (1) the four of us drive to Kansas City on Saturday to visit her sister, brother-in-law and their new baby, (2) I fly back on Sunday to work during the week, (3) she drives alone with the boys to St. Louis on Tuesday to see a friend and attend her daughter's birthday party, (4) she continues on alone with the boys to Chicago on Wednesday to see my mom and sister, (5) I fly to Chicago Thursday to spend Labor Day weekend together and, finally, (6) we all drive back to Tulsa on Monday.

Will enjoyed the trip with his new neck pads which really helped support his head while napping in his car seat. Between naps, Will watched DVDs, wrote on the Magna Doodle and played with a long procession of toys handed back to him from the front. Drew, seen here kicking back watching a DVD, was an incredible trooper.

In Drew's lap is his Star Wars Transformers Boba Fett & Slave I. Drew was such a good boy on the trip to Chicago and all the time there that we bought him the transformer to play with on the trip back. The package says it is for children 5+ years and Drew is only 3 1/2 so we didn't know if it would be too hard or frustrating for him...how wrong we were. We waited until we were outside Chicago before giving it to him in the hopes of maximizing it's entertainment value during drive through the flat cornfields of Illinois. After an hour we figured we had gotten more than our money's worth. After two hours of transforming back and forth and playing with the resulting ship and guy we were amazed. All told, the trip took 13 hours of which about 10 were driving and we figure Drew played with the transformer for total of about 5-6 hours! The Star Wars Transformer was easily the best purchase ever...and there may be some more in the boys' future...*wink* *wink*.