A Really, Really Awful Trip Home

After spending two fabulous weeks with my parents, it was time to head home.  Unlike the trip to my parents' house, which was pretty flawless and took us 6 hours, this trip was from that really, really hot place and took us 9 1/2 hours.  (And no, there are no pictures to go with it.)

We left right after Tyler's last swimming lesson.  I was already exhausted before we even got in the van because the girls were at Tyler's swimming lesson.  Emily, who didn't feel well (as you'll see), stayed on Kimberly's lap and just watched.  Megan, on the other hand, was a little stinker.  She would not sit still at all.  She either wanted to take her clothes off and get in the pool and/or run around.  The pool area is like a sauna so I was hot and tired as I wrestled Megan for the full 30 minutes.  She screamed and cried at the very end because she wanted to jump off the rope into the big pool like the older kids were doing.

Then I took all 3 kids with me so we could get Tyler's clothes changed.  Both family changing rooms were occupied so all 3 kids thought they'd run through the halls and out in the lobby while we were waiting.  Finally I decided to wrangle them up and take them to the women's dressing room, hoping we wouldn't see any naked women changing out of their swimming suits.  Luckily the coast was clear.  The door to the handicap stall (the only one big enough for all 4 of us) wouldn't lock and the girls wanted to escape or get down on the floor and look under the dividers.  When Tyler was dressed we went back into the pool area to say good bye to all of the cousins and to Kimbo.  Tyler cried and cried because he wanted all of the cousins to come with us.

I got the kids loaded in the van and started a DVD.  I gave each one a bowl with snacks and we headed out at 11:00 a.m.  I was heading down the freeway when I saw a blown-out semi truck tire in the road.  That reminded me that earlier when I was loading the van I had noticed that the left rear tire was low.  I pulled off at a service-less exit to check the tire pressure.  The tire only had 10-15 lbs. of pressure while the others had 45 lbs. of pressure.  There was no cell phone service so I headed the 9 miles back into town.  I got off the freeway and went slowly on the frontage road--just in case something happened.

My parents had headed out of town to go to my cousin's wedding so I hoped and prayed that I would be able to find my brother at his office.  Luckily he was there and told me where the Les Schwab Tire Center was.

Normally I have the double stroller with me, but there wasn't room to bring it on the trip, so I was at the mercy of 2 "free" little toddlers and their big brother who thought freedom was worth every bit of stress it gave their mother.  After I got Tyler and Megan out of the van I went to get Emily out.  Tyler and Megan saw some huge tires and ran off through the parking lot to get to them.  Then Megan saw a dog on the road and started running toward it.  I luckily was able to grab her before she got to the dog or the road.

The waiting room for Les Schwab is NOT designed with kids in mind.  All they wanted to do is run through the store and crawl through the tires.  And I think the fake plant lost a leaf or two thanks to Tyler.  The store did have complimentary popcorn which Megan and Emily both wanted.  Then Emily thought it would be fun to dump her bag of popcorn on the floor.  Megan thought that was a fabulous idea and decided to do the same thing.

My brother came over to the tire store to make sure we had made it and to keep us company for a little bit.  I was very grateful for that.  As the technician was pulling our van out of the garage to go take it for a ride to check things out Tyler saw him and started crying, "Our van!  Come back here with our van!"  He still wouldn't be consoled until it was back.  The technician was SO nice and didn't charge us at all for fixing our tire, even though our tires were not from their store.

It was 1:00 p.m. by that time.  So we headed over to the McDonald's drive thru to get lunch.  I put fries and cheeseburgers in their snack bowls, filled the sippy cups up with chocolate milk and headed down the freeway again.  I was about in the same place where I had noticed the blown-out tire when I hear Megan say, "Emmy spit up."  And then I could hear the poor thing hurling.  I pulled over at an abandoned gas station to assess the damage.    Emily hadn't eaten any of her fries or hamburgers, but she had inhaled the whole sippy cup of chocolate milk.  She had pieces of popcorn mixed in the 2-inch puddle of chocolate milk between her legs.  I used swimming towels to mop up the mess and then got Emily out of the car to strip her down and clean her off with baby wipes.  I had to unload quite a bit of the trunk to get to the suitcase for a change of clothes.

After changing Emily and cleaning her up, I took her bowl of cheeseburger, fries and throw up over to the weeds to empty it.  When I got back to the van I noticed Tyler had eaten all he could, so I took his bowl over to throw his food in the weeds.  When I got back I noticed there were little pieces of bread and hamburger on the floor.  Megan had decided she was done and was breaking up her cheeseburger and chucking the pieces throughout the van--some even landed on the driver's seat and the driver's floor.

So we headed down the road again only to stop 20 minutes later to change the DVD.  Because even though we hadn't gone 30 miles, we'd already gone through the entire Cars 2 DVD.  Unfortunately, the stop made Megan wake up from her "almost nap"  and she never did go back to the sleep the whole trip.  Grrrr!

I pulled off a couple hours later to get a snack of peaches and grapes for the kids.  When I opened the side van door to give Tyler's his snack, I was met with a pile of stuffed animals and toys on the floor that Tyler had unloaded from the box next to him.  Grrrr!

After traveling another hour or so I decided to stop at a rest area for a break.  There are two rest areas fairly close to each other.  One is in a "travel plaza" hooked onto a gas station and convenience store.  The other is located on the side of a mountain and is only surrounded by parking lot which could be dangerous to kids on the lamb.  I weighed both options and decided to go to the convenience store.

The handicap stall was not available so all 4 of us squished in a tiny stall and I kept telling the kids, "Don't touch the toilet.  Don't touch ...(whatever gross thing they wanted to touch.)."  I couldn't see a drinking fountain so we went out to the convenience store area so I could find a place to fill up my water bottle and the kids sippy cups with water.  The only thing I could find was a button on the soda machines that said "water."  Well, it turns out the button only gave shots of water.  It would have taken 50-100 shots to fill up my water bottle.  I thought, "This is ridiculous," and as I turned around to find something better, I found Megan and Emily stacking up souvenir shot glasses on top of each other.  Both of them had nice stacks going.  Thankfully nothing broke.

I herded all 3 kids to a random sink to fill up our bottles.  We were heading out when I decided to buy the kids a treat.  All three of them do really well with popsicles, so I thought I'd try something like that.  After all, it was super hot outside.  I got three sherbet push-up pops and headed to the counter to pay.  While waiting in line, Megan and Emily decided to poke the available saran-wrapped pieces of cake in the display case and Megan got a hold of a banana and dropped it.  On the way out the door to the parking lot I spotted the drinking fountain by the bathrooms--nice!

There's a grassy area behind the travel plaza where the kids ate their push-up pops.  What a mess!  They melted so quickly and made an orange, sticky mess everywhere.  Plus the girls just wanted to run to areas where they weren't supposed to go.  After cleaning all three kids up with baby wipes we were on our way again.

At dinner time I pulled off so the kids could get out and play at a germ-infested McDonald's playland.  I went through the drive thru to get our meal so I wouldn't have to keep track of all three kids while I was ordering at the counter.  I herded all 3 kids from the van to the tables at the playland to have their chicken nuggets and boxes of apple juice (which spilled out of all 3 straws and made a sticky, sticky mess everywhere.)

We finally made it home at 8:30 p.m. Ugh!  What a long, long trip.  I let Darrell give the kids baths while I unloaded the van.  I was one exhausted momma by the time bedtime came along!