Road Trips and Kids...Need I Say More???

Alright, here is how our trip to Utah this past weekend went... prepare yourselves, I was ready to SCREAM!!

We all got in the car to drive out of the driveway about an hour and a half later than planned, already we were in trouble. That meant that we would be pulling into my mom's driveway WAY later than our sanity was going to hold out. So, we get to the Victorville area and I unbuckle myself to turn around and start Parker's next feeding, only to reach for the tube to find he is sitting in a pool of STOMACH CONTENTS!!! Somehow his med port opened spilling the entire contents of his stomach, including his morning seizure meds, all over the van!! Did I mention that we had just paid the day before to have someone shampoo the stupid thing??? Yeah. And now we were going to have to smell BARF for the rest of the trip. NICE! So we pull of the freeway to figure out how we are going to get him cleaned up. It's not like we had a portable bathtub, or a convenient location of his suitcase, it was crammed into the furthest spot possible, underneath the wheelchair, Christmas presents, pillows, treasures that the kids "just had to take with them", snacks, winter clothes that we had to scrounge for, because, who needs winter clothes in Southern California???... you get the idea. So, we had to strip him down in the frigid temps, get him cleaned up as much as we could, noting, that we would have to stop in St. George and get him another pair of pants. Unpacking EVERYTHING to get to his suitcase???? We weren't even going there.

So we are back on the road. Now comes the regular stuff that most parents deal with. Tattling, complaining, wanting snacks, a different movie, the dreaded "Why is it taking so long to get to Grandma's house?" a zillion times, crying, refusing to just give in already and take a nap ...again, you get the idea.

So in between all of the whining, complaining and bickering, we finally get to St. George only to find that of course, the parking lot is PACKED! I mean, really PACKED! Fred runs in, because, are we unloading all of the kids, the wheelchair??? Do I look CRAZY to you??? He goes in, gets the loot, comes back out, and the sweats he bought for Parker are a 16/18. He accidentally grabbed the wrong size. Really, they were HUGE! I could have worn them (around the house only, of course). So, back in he goes, only this time he had to stand in the returns line. Grrr! So, several minutes later, he comes out, only to find that they didn't give him the right bag. So he had to go back in AGAIN!! Really, I am not making this up! Alright, so after sitting the the parking lot for 45 minutes, Parker is dressed, and we are on the road again.

Getting really P'd off now!

Down the road 10 minutes and it is more of the same. I can't handle reliving it, so, re-read paragraph 2 for details.

We finally arrived at Grandma's house at 10:45 pm!!! Watched the kids run crazy for over an hour, come on, I had to let them wear themselves out a little or we never would have gotten them in bed. And then the magic started...we had all sorts of hands that wanted to help get kids ready and tucked in.

Thank goodness for GRANDMA'S HOUSE!!!