I have never reposted before but I thought we could all use a reminder of what NOT to do...road trip with small children. It was one year ago today that we were driving to NC. Cause we were stupid. I say again...sorry Carly.
So I decided to put my big girl panties on today. I'm gonna write about the awfulness that was ...The Drive. That picture up there. The one of Piper screaming. Pretty much sums it up. I'm going to do you all a favor right now. Should I EVER come up to you and say, "I had a great idea. Two words - ROAD TRIP". Run away. Seriously, run away. Stupidest idea ever. Carly will NEVER let me forget that this was my idea. You can read about her side of the story here
http://carlybirdsnest.blogspot.com/2010/10/series-of-unfortunate-events.html. And that's just the trip out.
So yeah. I had the awesome idea that Carly and I should drive to NC and take the pop-up with us to stay in. The real flaw in this plan was when I said "and the kids will come too". I like to think it may have been fun if it was just us. We do have road trip history after all. And that one was fun. (When she graduated from high school we drove me out to Philmont that summer) Anyway, three kids five and under. Plus my 9 pound dog Bob. (Honestly, Bob was the least trouble. But he WAS on antihistamines for an allergic reaction and was still pretty depressed about LeeRoy. So he slept a lot.)
Turns out young active kids don't really like being in a car for 12 hours during the day. Or any other time for that matter. We drove for 12 hours that first day. Probably 10 of those hours someone was crying. And when small children cry, my dog howls. Oh yes, I said it. Carly has an awesome video of it that I hope she posts sometime. In that first day, we only made it about 300 miles. In. Twelve. Hours. Middle of Kansas. Just the middle. We gave up and stopped at a campground. (hours away from where we actually wanted to get that day) It took me maybe half an hour to set up the camper. Piper followed me around the entire time - screaming her head off. I can only imagine the panic everyone around us felt when we showed up. We decided we'd have better luck driving at night when everyone was asleep. So we stayed at that campground all the next day. We unpacked and repacked the car. And the kids... played in the car. Yep, roam a campground or play in the car that is your prison for the next 30 or so hours. We choose the car!
It was around this time that stuff started going wrong. Huh? Wasn't it already wrong? Not really. A word of advice, don't let a two year old play in the car. Thank me later. While Carly and I were unpacking and repacking, Piper shoved approximately $3.87 into the cd player. You've got to be kidding! Nope. Do I need to tell you that cd players don't really like having $3.87 shoved into them? Do I need to remind you that we were only in Kansas? We still had like 6 or 7 more states to go. With. No. Cd. Player. (This part of the story got even worse for the ride home. Daddy fished out quite a lot of that money - but not all of it apparently. We put in a cd to test it out and the radio quit working. Thank goodness for Carly's phone. We were able to listen to the radio through her phone on the way home. And I still don't have that fixed.)
As we were leaving, I just had to open my mouth and joke "now all we need is for the car to break down". Maybe ten miles down the road (TEN MILES - I kid you not) the car started acting weird and the engine light came on. Still not kidding. Carly has a super funny version of this on her blog. (see above) To sum it up, picture Carly, (complete with yoga pants, a head lamp, and a Sigg bottle of water) getting ready to pour cold water into the engine that was turned off. A man named George Busch (no lie) took pity on us and saved us from making costly mistakes. Turned out we had no antifreeze at all. I don't think that's why the check engine light came on - but it was a blessing. George helped us get the anti-freeze in and told us where to go to have the diagnostic for the check engine light. So 3 hours after we had tried to leave (and decisions involving all husbands and our Dad) we actually left. Again. I can't tell you how happy we were to get out of Kansas.
So then, in a "rip the bandaid off" kind of mood, we drove 28 hours straight. (Stopping only for food and bathroom breaks. And to check the anti-freeze.) Arriving in our parents driveway at ten o'clock friday night. Not too far past our original arrive time. Exhausted, and in serious need of alcoholic beverages, we put the kids to bed and tried to unwind enough to get to sleep ourselves.
We did have a great time with everyone there! I have a post about that coming soon. Midway through our stay in NC we started dreading the trip back. Carly told her husband that the boys could just pack up all our stuff and meet us there. "Cause we're not doing it again." For your information, 4 hour plane rides (even if they cry the whole 4 hours and you get the stink eye from everyone on the plane) are way better than driving a million hours to get anywhere. I've decided that if I can't get there in ONE night of my children sleeping (cause they don't like it during the day!!!) I'm not going. That limits me to 10 or 12 hours MAX. Ya'll can meet me in the middle.
JKFP
Back when we were still optimistically stupid about this idea. Just east of Denver I believe.
A cute one - not crying. Cause he thought we were there no doubt.
Again. One of the rare moments without tears.
I'm going to link up to Happily Home Sewn and her Peek of the week first thing in the morning so go check out her peek. And seriously, friends don't let friends road trip with little ones.
**For some reason I'm having trouble with the "Peek" button. I'm sure it's user error. I'll try again in the morning. But for now...
I still can't get the button to work but the link does. And oh my goodness you HAVE to go see her peek. HAVE TO.
