Birmingham or Somewhere in that General Vicinity or At Least in the State of Alabama or Bust

Today was a big day. The kids and I left early for the longer driving day to go down to Florida to see my parents. My goal was to get to Alabama somewhere, ideally to Birmingham. I didn't quite make it to Birmingham before I started getting tired, so we stayed in Athens, which is just outside of Huntsville. It was a long day, but it went super smoothly. With the exception of some grumbling around our normal nap time, they really didn't complain at all and kept themselves occupied and dealt fairly well with, "I can't help you with your things so don't drop them everywhere". I am so glad we got a second Kindle Fire as, even though they were disappointed our car doesn't have wifi so they were limited to the movies I had loaded, those really did keep them occupied. I am planning to get a third for Hannah's birthday this year since she is getting less happy about sharing all the time. Hannah slept for a bit, but the older two didn't really. I was able to listen to some of my audio book, Mockingjay, while driving. I wasn't sure it would be possible for me to pay attention enough with the kids around, but I definitely made a lot of head way on it, even if I couldn't listen the entire time. The only hard part of the day was the logistics of checking in to the hotel because I needed to get one suitcase and three backpacks plus my own laptop bag into the hotel room with three kids whose ability to carry things is extremely marginal. At home when I unload groceries, I just have them stay in the house, but I can't do that at a hotel because I can't lock them in the room from the outside so they could just decide to leave while I am going downstairs to get the bags, which would be a disaster, so I have to keep them with me. It ended up going fine because they had luggage carts so I just had the kids sit on a bench in my view while I got the bags and carried them to the hotel lobby, and then we used the cart to get everything to the room. I was kind of tired after our long day, so we didn't swim, but the hotel had Disney Junior, which most hotels do not, so they were able to unwind with dinner and some tv and they slept well.