Our trip to Detroit

My brother-in-law, Tanner, is serving a 2 year church mission in Detroit, Michigan. He goes home in less than a week now, so Monday we went and visited him. He's a lot closer to us now than he will be when he goes home to Utah next week, and he hasn't seen Jake since his first birthday and he'd never met McKenna. Plus Andrew and I have missed him!

I was pretty nervous about the long day in the car for the kids. It was 8+ hours in the car, and then lots of time in the stroller, which they aren't used to at all. I figured McKenna would sleep close to 2 hours each direction, but that girl does not like sleeping outside of her crib! She got about 20 minutes on the way there and another 15 on the way home. For how little sleep she had, she was pretty good, thankfully. 

Jake, on the other hand, has given up naps, but took a 2 hour snooze on the way home. No amount of poking or bribery with the iPad could keep him awake, so it ended up being a very late night for all of us. But despite all the sleeping woes, it was a great day and a once in a lifetime opportunity to see Tanner as a missionary. 

As we drove into Detroit we switched our car from venting in "fresh" air to recirculating the air already in the car because the pollution there is absolutely disgusting!  There were tons and tons of smokestacks, some of which were emitting a brownish orange haze of yuckiness rather than the typical white color that you can almost believe is steam rather than pollution. And the smell!

Our second experience of Detroit came when we hit pothole after pothole, which was more accurately described as crater after crater! When we pulled into the fast food restaurant parking lot where we met Tanner, he pointed out the government housing, and the number of scary looking people on the street was the highest I've ever seen! And when we ordered the food, it was through a bullet-proof glass window, and then they passed it out through a turn table. Eek! I'm glad it was light and we were with several men, or I would have been peeing my pants!

After a fun lunch catching up with Tanner, we headed to the Detroit Auto Show. For how yucky the city seemed, the auto show was clean and really bright and impressive! I think looking at the mini vans vs SUV's convinced us that we are going to be a mini-van family, despite saying adamantly for at least 10 years that I would never come to that :)

After walking around the auto show, we headed to Greek Town on the Detroit People Miver, which is a fun train-ish system that takes you over the city. There we had flaming cheese, which they actually light on fire, which really impressed Jake. And the rest of us!

The kids were pretty grumpy by time we were heading back to our car, but I think all of us had fun seeing Tanner, who kept reminding us that we should be calling him Elder Olsen. And we survived the trip home. What a great Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday it was for us!