Are We There Yet?

OVER THE RIVER AND TO THE WOODS: Apologies for the tardy post, but yesterday was a loooooooooooooooong day. A very looooooooong day. Three hundred and ten miles long, to be exact.
We left Seattle just after 8 a.m. and for much of the 175 mile drive to our lunchtime destination - Vancouver, WA. - we listened to and sang Christmas carols. I told Christian that I don't want "Jingle Bells, Batman smells, Robin laid an egg" to be the only holiday tune they know all the words to.

We arrived at our first stop, Grandma and Grandpa's house, a few minutes after 11. We were happy to see them and stretch our legs.

By around 2:00 it was back in the car for the second leg of our trip, south through Portland, through Salem, through Corvallis and then onward toward the ocean and Nonnie and Bops' place. Part of the way, Rick, CJ and Annabelle amused themselves by drawing completely inappropriate though pretty darn funny pictures in dry erase markable book.
We got to Nonnie and Bops just before 5 p.m.

By about 6 p.m. CJ started crashing hard. What was a stuffy nose has bloomed into a full fledged horrible cold. He's hurtin' for certain. :(

IN THE MORNING: CJ slept through the night, but he's no better today. :( He did rally for a Christmas cookie decorating session this morning.
He was pretty proud of his cookie that had a spider on it.
Bee made faces on more than one of her cookies.
TRACKING DEVICE: this afternoon we checked in with NORAD to see how Santa's journey is going so far. It's cool - on a world map, you can see all the places he's already been (as indicated by gift icons), as well as where he is right now (as evidenced by a Santa icon). You can click on any of the icons and see photos of his stop, and there's even video of some of his deliveries!
There's also a cool, interactive "Kids' Countdown" portion of the Web site. It's a section of the village at the North Pole, and there are many games to be played there.

In case you were wondering, (I was!) NORAD stands for North American Aerospace Defense Command, and it's the bi-national U.S.-Canadian military organization responsible for the aerospace and maritime defense of the United States and Canada.