Vacation Day 1- Monday

Vacation Day 1
Monday December 27
Kevin and Charlotte were blessing Vaughn in Brownsburg the day after Christmas, so we figured there wasn't really any point in driving down and then back home, so we just packed up everything and left from there after the blessing.
We stayed at a surprisingly nice Microtel in Indy that night for surprisingly cheap (thank you again Priceline). And had a quick breakfast in the morning before taking off. The excitement in our van was palpable. We were finally on our family vacation. I love family vacations!!! Can you tell? We had already decided that we were NOT interested in a straight-through mad-dash if we didn't have to. And we didn't have to. We had a hotel in Daytona Beach, FL for Thursday night and 4 days to get there. Nice and slow. We had also already decided we wanted to spend some time in Nashville (we've been eyeing it for a while as a possible place to move to- temple, good schools, good home values, good job market). Anyway, so we only drove an hour before we saw the Edinburgh outlets in Columbus, IN and thought "yea, we can stop." Jared has a soft spot for Columbia wear and IZOD shirts. And we hit the jack pot, because it was after-Christmas sales. Yay!
Moving on. We planned to reach Louisville by night (a whooping 3 hours of driving for the day- I told you we were taking it slow). We thought we'd stop at Mammoth Cave and do a little sight seeing, but can you believe it- they were closed for Christmas? Bum-mer!

So we got to Louisville, KY earlier than expected and found a local BBQ joint. Yum!! We had a super nice room that night because the hotel was practically empty and they gave us this gynormous corner suite- for FREE! Awesome. And we had the whole pool to ourselves. And the kiddies were happy happy. Eat, swim, play, hotel. We all fell asleep in happy vacation mode that night.