Cars and car rides

So Mark and I bought a new (to us anyway) car yesterday. We got a 2006 VW Passat. It's a pretty nice car and has pretty much ALL the bells and whistles. It's all wheel drive, which should come in handy on those narrow, curvy, sometimes snowy roads in Germany. It has a navigation system, a premium sound system and pretty much every upgrade you could buy on the car in 2006. We're pretty happy with it, and we're even more happy that we got a really good deal on it. (As in close to $7000 under book retail price!!!) The one downside is that it only came with one key and those stupid "keys" are $250+ to replace! It's not a traditional key, it's this little rectangular box thing that you push into the dash to start the car, no turning anything. Gotta love German engineering!

So as great as the car is, we're both very worried about our Christmas plans... Our plan right now is to drive home for Christmas... Yes, I do think we're partially insane to even consider it. It wouldn't be bad if it was just us or even us and the weinas. But when you add our darling little (amazingly loud) girl into the mix, that 28 hour drive looks more like 3 days of pure torture. Abbie doesn't exactly like her car seat at times... As in, you put her in it and she SCREAMS for 10-15 mins until she falls asleep or you get her out of it. I could handle fussing or even crying, but her screaming gets really old after about 15 seconds of it. I'm really not sure how she'd do with 3 days of sitting in her car seat. Yes, we've thought about flying, but our first issue with that is getting all Abbie's junk, plus our stuff, plus the dogs, plus presents home. Our 2nd issue with that is cost. It's over $350 per ticket right now for Mark and I, plus $150 per dog PER WAY, plus the cost of a car rental. So just for us and the dogs to get home is $1300. We thought about boarding the dogs, but I've never boarded them before and we'll be home for over 2 weeks. So we figured it'd be at least $20 per dog per day, which means it'd be at least $560 to board them, only saving us $40. Plus we'd have to rent a car to get between our parents houses and to have some freedom to visit friends and do our own thing, and that'd be at least $500 if not more for 2 weeks. So... looks like we're going to drive. But I am truly very nervous about it. Does anyone have any ideas as to how to entertain a 7 month old on a 28 hour car ride? If anything, could you just say a few prayers that we're still sane when we get to IL? We're most likely going to need all the help we can get...