We traveled with the kids by car to Texas last week for my brothers wedding. I will give more info about the wedding and pictures in later entries but I felt the traveling process earned itself it's own special entry. We decided to drive in stead of fly. We rented a large SUV so we could have plenty of room for the trip. One of the reasons we decided not to fly was because the expense for the four of us would have been crazy. But more then that I find that when we travel with the kids we have to bring a ridiculous amount of stuff. I swear we packed a forth of our belongings! We have to bring the usual clothes, toiletries and shoes but in addition we have to have sleeping supplies, medicines, bath toys, sippy cups, stroller, snacks, backpacks with school work, toys for the hotel as well as things for the 14-16 hour car ride, diaper bag, car seat, pack and play and anything else we might
need for every possible occasion and catastrophe. The whole packing process is enough to kill me! The huge car we rented was packed down. I can imagine us dragging all of that stuff into the air port and up to the counter only to be told it would be an extra $300 in baggage prices!So we packed one stroller, one pack and play, one carseat, 5 pillows, four blankets, one lap tray, 13 bags and four people in the SUV and were ready to go. We breathed the "the" sigh of relief and exhaustion (this is the same sigh that happens every time we finally get everyone and everything in the car to go somewhere). We finally got on the highway two hours past our planned time of departure. Nine miles down the highway we heard the first dreaded words........."Mommy, I need to go potty." Ahhhh! Already! After that we stoped about 8 more times for the potty that day. It seemed like 800, though as we were tyring to get to Texarcana where we planned to have a sit down dinner, and let the kids swim at the hotel pool before before we had to go to bed. Everytime we stopped Greg wanted to check out the gas station which you would think was a gallaria shopping mall. The first time we took a trip he spent all of his spending money at the gas stations on the way there. He is so hillarious.
The kids actually did really well in the car, though. Praise the Lord for the invention of the portable DVD player!!!! A MUST HAVE for anyone traveling with kids. They could watch that thing all day if I let them. We turned that thing on and it was more quiet then I ever remember. I finally layed my head down on my pillow to take a much needed nap after the last few days of getting ready for the trip and sleep was comming fast......"MOMMY WAKE UP!!!" "DON'T SLEEP MOMMY!!!" I have no idea why but Bella does not like me to sleep when she is not sleeping. This happened several times on the trip. I was thrilled.
Amazingly, we roled into Texarcana at 6. it helped that we had forgotten about ganging an hour when we changed time zones. The hotel was nice but it was a huge let down that Texas temps wer unusually cool which made the pool freezing. But the boys still decided to get in the hot tub. We got all dressed to go in only to find that it was broken and also freezing. Oh, well.
So Thursday came and we were all excited to get to Dallas. We set off for our three hour drive. I put a movie in for Bella and Greg was asked to work on some homework for all the days he is missing. Greg is a carbon copy of me when I was his age as we both have ADHD and have difficulty stying on task. As usual he kept finding things to distract him from his work. Greg was trying to get my attention to show me something. As I looked back to see what he was trying to show me I realized what he was doing too late. All of a sudden the dome light came on and the car started beeping, announcing that a door was ajar! Yeah, we were going 75 on the highway at the time and Greg had decided he would show me how the door wouldn't open if he was holding it shut. Yeah, we pulled over immediately and he got a good lecture. He honestly didn't think it would open. Yeah, Greg, why would the car open if you pull the handle? That is crazy! We ragged on him for the rest of the trip.
We finally got to Dallas without killing each other at 12:00. I breathed a sigh of relief!
