Last minute road trip

We are in Missouri! It happened all of a sudden about ten days ago. The Thursday night before I left for Time Out for Women last weekend, I mentioned a MO road trip in passing and Jeff surprised me by saying we should go. I signed a long term absence form at Jay's school and four days later we were on the road! We left Grandview around 6:30am on Tuesday, March 8th. That thirty hour drive is still thirty hours long, if you were wondering. It was physically painful for my long limbs to be curled in a car for two days straight, and this time around we even had a van instead of a tiny Civic! It still ached.

 

Ten hours into the drive on day one, we stopped in Salt Lake City at Temple Square for a shake-out leg stretching walk. It was much needed for all of us but also rather stressful to do solo with three kids full of pent up energy! Everyone kept running in opposite directions, and I wasn't entirely sure I should let them run and scream and climb up and down the temple steps, but...they did! We walked around for about an hour and then got Chick-fil-a in City Creek Mall's food court before reclaiming our car and hitting the road once more.

 

 

When she wasn't climbing, Amber was running practically the entire time we were there. A little pink blur.

They kept sliding down next to the stairs...it felt like it wasn't allowed...

Gorgeous temple doors.

 

 

 

I've never been to the reflecting pool at the Salt Lake Temple before--so pretty! I really have hardly spent any time in Utah, so I'm a total Mormon tourist and I know hardly anything about the place.

 

I've never actually been to City Creek Mall in Salt Lake City, and it really has an actual creek inside the mall! We thought the fish swimming in it were pretty awesome.

 

Four and a half hours later, we pulled into Rawlins, Wyoming to stay at our tried and true $44/night First Choice Inn. It took forever and a few desperate prayers to find the place because 1. my phone had no service 2. I took the wrong exit, and 3. I could only remember the name of the street but not the inn's numeric address. Eventually we got there and collapsed onto the polyester floral beds in bone-deep exhaustion. Jay and Rose fell asleep pretty fast, but Amber, who had been asleep for the past four hours in the car, was up and ready to play! She walked all over the little room, pushing every button she could find and exploring every icky corner of that little place. Finally, with great effort, I shoved the bed against the wall (the headboard remained screwed to the wall six inches to the right), and bundled her into bed with me. I endured nearly another hour of wiggly baby picking my nose and gouging my eyeballs while I laid there trying to rest before she snuggled up right next to me and fell asleep.

 

 

Five hours later, Rose woke up to pee and she had to tell me all about it. I was in no condition to get back on the road after my brief nighttime nap, however, so I let myself lounge in bed for another hour. Then I got up and got everything ready while Amber slept as long as possible. Jay requested breakfast in bed, and I thought "anything to make this second day of driving fun!" and brought him and Rose bowls of cereal. They ate, sitting up in bed and even Amber had her breakfast in bed. Then we gathered our STUFF and clambored back into the trusty van. Fifteen hours later, we pulled into my sister Em's driveway in Washington, Missouri. In my exhausted haze, I had a wry thought: we drove thirty hours from [Grandview] Washington only to end up in Washington [Missouri]. Hah!

 

On the road again, day two!

Once we got out of sunny, snowy Wyoming, we entered sunny warm Nebraska. The clouds were puffy and perfect in that blue sky! And we ran laps around every gas station we stopped at.

 

 

Diaper change at a truck pull-off in the dark--Amber just loved that cold air on her bum. Amber did about as well as I expected her to do on the long drive. I packed a little box full of random junk (like a paintbrush, a loofa, an empty water bottle, a spool of thread, three bristle blocks stuck together, an envelope, etc.) and I kept handing her different things every time she got fussy back there. It worked relatively well, and she only was really upset a few times. Every time we got gas, I let her out to do a lap or two around the parking lot. She survived.

Here's how the crew looked when we arrived at our destination--zzzzzzz. I was pretty desperate when we finally entered Missouri. I had been counting on a solid 7 or 8 hours of sleep in Rawlins, and I got barely five. That made the last quarter of the second day MURDER. I almost pulled over and gave up at least a dozen times once it got dark and started raining along highway 70 in Missouri. I am trying not to think about repeating this drive in a week.

We are on day four of our elevn day stay with my sister Em, her husband Jesse, and their four kids. Can we say cousin-fest? We have seven kids between the ages of 1 and 8 between the two of us. Can we say cousin-chaos? It's kind of amazing. I love watching our kids play and talk and become better friends.

** ok, I did this post on an iPad app with a bluetooth keyboard and it was HARD! I may have to fix it when I get home to my own computer.

 

 

Posted with Blogsy