I wanted to add a pic­ture here of the boys with my par­ents, but for some rea­son it’s not work­ing.  Here is the link to the pic­ture.  Feel free to check it out.  Well, I wanted to link the part where I said, “Here’s the link” to the actual pic­ture.  That’s not work­ing either.  Here is the copy and pasted link of my pic­ture!  http://www.flickr.com/photos/berberich/5624619442/in/photostream

Remem­ber all that after you read this post.  It might give you some idea of the type of day I’m having.  :)

 

For Easter this year, we went to my par­ents’ house.  They spent most of their win­ter down south, and Kael and Asa were both very anx­ious to visit them.  They wanted to get their share of grand­par­ent time in addi­tion to check­ing out their toy stash for any new arrivals or old favorites.

Some time in the semi-distant past, I was in a place where I was able to visit my par­ents pretty fre­quently.  I can’t remem­ber how often we vis­ited when we had only Kael, but I know that there were times dur­ing col­lege when we vis­ited at least every two months.  Oh, how things change.

We started out for my par­ents’ house on Fri­day morn­ing.  Before we even drove six blocks, we had to stop.  One of the older boys dropped a book.  Not a prob­lem, right?  We can make a quick stop and keep going.  Before we were out of town, we stopped again.  This time it was some­thing else that was a pretty easy fix.  We kept going.  Our third stop hap­pened about 90 miles from town.  We stopped for lunch.  Luck­ily, after lunch every­one seemed pretty con­tent, and we were able to get a decent chunk of dri­ving in.  After about 45 min­utes Jason said he had to go to the bath­room.  I said what every good teacher mom says.  “Are you sure?  Is it an emer­gency?”  I urged him (very strongly!) to wait.  He gave me a look, but he did.  We drove another hour and at that point when he started to pull into a gas sta­tion in a small town, I knew bet­ter than to argue with him.

As we got back on the road, we real­ized that we had for­got­ten baby food for Jonas.  Luck­ily, there was a town with a large gro­cery store just 10 min­utes down the road.  Yep.  Stop #5.  I ran in with Kael.  We got some baby food and gum and got back on the road.  We had about 70 miles left.  Sure enough, about 30 miles into the last leg of our trip, Jonas was tired of being in his seat.  Jason moved into the back seat next to him, and I took over dri­ving duties.  We made it through the final 40 miles with­out a stop.

 

Trip sum­mary:

Total dis­tance:  281 miles (We took a longer route than nor­mal to avoid some flood­ing detours)
Time:  6 hours and 15 min­utes
Stops:  6

That’s an aver­age of 47 miles in between stops and one stop every 63 minutes.

 

Of course we had a great time at my par­ents.  We relaxed.  We were very well fed.  We saw fam­ily.  We had very lov­ing, car­ing, com­pe­tent babysit­ters while we enjoyed a sup­per by our­selves.  We slept.  We watched the Food Net­work.  It was great.

This morn­ing, though, the time came to return home.  I was hop­ing for a trip that was easy and stress free as the trip out had been.  After dis­sect­ing the trip, it sounds a lot longer, chop­pier, and drawn out than it felt.  I had a book to read on the way out, and most of our stops were quick and easy.  So, even though we did stop 6 times, it wasn’t quite as bad as it sounds.

We packed all our stuff, and we got in the van.  We were on the road at almost the same time as we had left home on Fri­day.  Sure enough.  Just as we were get­ting going, Kael said, “I’m super cold.  I need some­thing that can keep my arms warm.”  So, we stopped and got him a sweat­shirt (after I turned up the heat and let it go a few min­utes).  A few min­utes later, the boys were fight­ing over books.  Who had how many, who had which ones, etc., etc.  Then, one of the books fell on the floor.  So, we stopped to get it, and we got the grapes out at the same time (I think.  I may be con­fus­ing stops though.)  We drove for a while, and then we heard, “Dad, I have to go potty!”  So, we stopped and used the con­ve­nient ditch potty avail­able next to a flooded road.  For those keep­ing track, that’s 3 stops in about 30 miles.  We man­aged to make the next 40 miles with­out a stop, but then it was lunch time, so you guessed it.  Stop #4.  We ate lunch, and we got back in the van.  After we ate, Jonas didn’t want to have any milk, and he wasn’t ready to go back to sleep.  Not great.

He started to fuss.  Jason reached into the back­seat, and he gave Jonas a few new toys to play with.  That didn’t seem to be what he needed.  So, he popped Jonas’s paci­fier in.  That wasn’t it either.  So, we stopped.  Jason hopped into the back­seat.  I drove.  As we drove, Jonas was get­ting more and more sad.  At one point, I remem­bered that I had a bag of expressed milk in a cooler bag in the back of the van.  After lis­ten­ing to my baby who never cries cry for so long, I stopped.  I grabbed the milk, and I started warm­ing it up on the dash of the van.

Now, nor­mally I would not use direct sun­light to warm expressed milk, but trust me, this wasn’t a nor­mal sit­u­a­tion!  It was get­ting a bit warmer, but as it slowly warmed up, Jonas was get­ting angrier and angrier.  I grabbed my mug of cof­fee and took a drink.  Then, I real­ized that both Jason and I had ther­mos mugs of warm/hot cof­fee.  When we are at home, we use warm water to reheat breast­milk.  I fig­ured that in a pinch this cof­fee could be a sub­sti­tute.  So, Jason stuck the bag of milk into his ther­mos and warmed the milk.  Appar­ently it did the trick.  He was able to get the milk into the bot­tle and feed Jonas as we drove.  Then, we drove.  And we drove.  And we drove.  We drove some­where around 150 or 160 miles with­out stopping!

As we were get­ting closer and closer to home, I started ask­ing as we approached each town, “Every­one okay?  Any­one need any­thing?”  I knew that if we needed to make a bath­room stop, I wouldn’t be able to stretch it for just a few more min­utes after the boys had waited over two hours.  They kept answer­ing the same, “No.”  “I’m okay.”  “Nope.”  Until we were about 12 miles from home.  As we were approach­ing our last chance bath­room stop, Jason asked if they needed to stop, and they both answered, “I do!”  So, we made our final stop.  12 miles from home.  We then arrived home to unload all our stuff in a quick rain shower.

Trip sum­mary:

Total dis­tance:  281 miles
Time: 5 hours and 45 min­utes
Stops:  7

That’s an aver­age of one stop every 40 miles and about every 49 minutes.

This, peo­ple, is why we don’t travel very far or very often.  :)

Happy Easter!