Tales from the Road

We made it to Gamma's and back safely, and aside from a little vomit, without incident. Granted, it used to be a 5 hour trip.... now it is more like an 8 hour trip one way. Ah, well, nothing in our lives is as it used to be!?!

We left Monday, shortly after Maggie, Kate, and Sarah woke from their afternoon naps, and drove for a couple of hours. The conversations were interesting and the music selection was rapid change kiddie fare. Ella was very curious about all the big trucks because we were traveling on the interstate. She doesn't see big trucks often around here because we don't have any interstate access in the county where we live. Oh, my, the questions... "Where are those big trucks going to? What are they carrying? Are they going to Florida? How do the big trucks drive to China?" On, and on, and on...

We made our first stop a few hours south at a McDonald's selected purely because of the big play place. Some dear family friends, the Bell's, joined us there to meet the girls for the first time. All four of the girls played all over the 3 level play area and had a great time. They also warmed up to the Bell's in no time, and everyone had an enjoyable dinner. We tried our best to take a quick photo of Mr. and Mrs. Bell with all four of the rowdies, but little Miss Ella was being quite contrary so this was the best we could do.

After the McDonald's adventure we went back to the Expedition to change into PJ's and get ready for the rest of the ride. Then we said our goodbyes and hit the road. The girls chatted with us and each other for a while, we made a couple of unnecessary bathroom stops for Ella, and then the whining began. The little girls were sick of being strapped into their car seats for hours on end, and who can blame them. It was past their bed time and they were just plain uncomfortable. Ella was using her trump card of "I have to go potty" way too often, and I finally told her that I should have brought Pull-Ups instead of expecting her to use the bathroom like an adult on the road trip. Her only comment regarding that was "Mom, what will be the source of my Pull Ups?" What 3 year old talks like that?!? I don't know if she even knows what a Pull Up is, much less where she gets these questions.

Finally, the bathroom breaks ceased and we had a request from the back of the car to play Daddy's favorite song On the Road Again. Scott searched through the pile of junk in the console, found his iPod and played some Willie Nelson for the gals in the back. I realized after the Stardust Melody that things were awfully quiet behind me, and it was at this point that I realized what good Southern girls we are raising.... it took 10 minutes of listening to Willie Nelson's greatest hits to tame the savage beasts that our children had become. They were asleep by 9pm.

Once the girls were asleep Scott and I attempted to listen to an NPR podcast entitled "Nurturing Your Children's Spirituality", or something like that. It was very interesting, but we kept having to stop it to discuss, and then there was the road construction.... very hard to hear the message with the bump-bump noises from the road. Just as I thought we'd finally be able to hear again, the girls each began to wake up, and sadly enough, they cried for the entire final hour of the drive once we got off the interstate.

Thankfully, Gamma had everything all set up for us when we arrived at 11:30 pm. However, the girls had never been there before, never met her cat, and they'd already been up crying for about an hour. Needless to say, they did not go straight off to blissful sleep in their unfamiliar surroundings. I think the last of them dropped around 2:30am, and we started the next day as usual at 7:20am.

This is getting very long, and I still have tons more to say, so I think I'll stop for tonight and post again tomorrow about how our time was spent once we finally settled in. Honestly, you'll want to check back tomorrow because the driving portion (there and back) was the only bad part of our entire week!