Summer Road Trip Pt 1

As our kids get older, they express more definite opinions on things that they want. Shortly after returning home from our trip to Michigan last summer, they started asking when we could go back. After much debating and budgeting and ho-humming, we decided that the whole family would DRIVE from TX to MI for a couple of weeks. One of the benefits of working for himself is that my husband can pretty much work from anywhere; we are very happy that he can be with us for the whole trip and I am particularly happy to not be driving 1000 miles, alone, with a 6 year old and 3 year old.

After packing the minivan the night before, we woke our kids at 6am and left our driveway at 6:15am. Obviously we made an immediate stop for coffee; 7-11 because although Dunkin Donuts has the best coffee in the world, we decided that we couldn't go there without getting donuts for the kids and that sugaring them up at that point in time not be wise. SJ & I had made super healthy oat bran-banana-blueberry muffins the night before for us to have for breakfast in the car. After a quick "hey which way do we go" moment, we were off.

The day before, a friend commented that our trip sounded like it could be a Griswold Family vacation. We laughed at that comment at about 7:30am. At about 7:45am, SJ asked to stop to go potty. After a lengthy #2 on the portable potty set up in the back of the vehicle, we were back on our way. 15 minutes later, poor baby was vomiting. In the car. On the pile of "fun stuff" that I thought out and prepared so carefully for the trip. Poor baby. Not to mention that her sweet brother was holding his nose and mouth making "ewwww! gross!" and wretching noises the whole time. She kept looking up at him as if she wanted to lay into him, but could only continue getting sick while my husband and I tried to comfort her and distract him - as if.

Not surprisingly, both adults in the car started feeling a little nauseous after the incident. My husband immediately decided it was the fault of the healthy muffins that I made - he had hoped beyond hope that I would make peanut butter chocolate chip...We threw the remaining muffins out, because if nothing else, seeing someone throw them up makes them decidedly less appealing.

About 45 minutes later, she got sick again. Of course, this whole time, we are trying to diagnose what is going on with her - something she ate (muffins....), flu, car sick...?? Then there is the question of turning around and heading back home and rescheduling the departure for another day. Ultimately, with her blessing, we continued on and she seemed fine the rest of the day.

It took us about 4 hours to get our of TX and into the lovely state of Arkansas. Ugh. At first it seemed ok - lots of bigger trees (something we don't see much of in North Texas) and not quite as flat as we are used to. We checked our handy AAA tour book to get some recommendations for lunch. Dixie Cafe - described as "Norman Rockwell" decor and down home southern cooking. Perfect right?! They listed a few different locations in and around Little Rock, so we figured it would be great. Better than a chain we could visit anywhere, yet safer than a single unit mom & pop kind of place.

We couldn't be more wrong. As soon as we pulled into the parking lot, we knew we were in for it. However, if you have ever traveled with children, you know that at that point, there is no changing your mind. Let's just say our waiter seemed confused the entire time, the nicest thing I can say about person who delivered our food is that she was surly, half of us did not get what we ordered, and the food was barely edible. Despite all this, we were all happy and at the end of the meal AJ was playing with a straw, trying to "blow more air" into his daddy. Insert your own joke here...Anyhoo, we all got to laughing - a lot. By the time we left we noticed that the majority of the other diners - I use the term loosely - were glaring at us. Yes folks, we managed to get blacklisted in a crappy restaurant in the middle of Arkansas. Thank you very much.

Those were really the best details of our first day, but here are some other brief points I'd like to remember from this leg of our first family road trip:

• Wireless cards and car power supplies for laptops are awesome.
• I love the sound of SJ singing along to her mp3 with her headphones on. Priceless.
• AJ still looks like an angelic baby when he sleeps. He does EVERYTHING in life to the fullest, including sleep. Joie de Vivre is a phrase we have used for him since he was crawling.
• My kids may hold up better than I do on long car rides.
• The travel potty seat was a very wise purchase.
• Graceland is somewhere I want to visit someday. We did the drive by and jumped out for a quick pic from the road.
• Our gps does NOT know Memphis.
• AR and TN are not states that I would be excited to live in. Definitely NOT AR. Maybe there are some nice parts of TN. We didn't see them.
  

I will post more soon about day 2!