Packing up was an all-night event. I decided that this time, I was going to have a clean house before we left, gosh darn it! (We always have goals to do all the dishes and laundry before we leave on a trip, but we NEVER do, and we always have such a let-down coming home!) Between cleaning and packing and that ever-present feeling of forgetting something, I didn't go to bed at all the night before we left. And we left early in the morning, 4:15am! (The plan was to get a few hours of driving done before the kids woke, so we might make it there faster. It was the best compromise between driving overnight and not leaving until dawn.)
The kids were so excited; we warned them the night before that they'd wake up in the car. (Jack sometimes has a hard time handling surprises, so we warn him beforehand whenever we think a surprise might upset him.) So, they felt us lifting their sleeping bodies up to put them in the car, and they woke right up! Luckily they were happy, and ended up going back to sleep after an hour.
We stopped and breakfasted as soon as we got to Nevada. Got back on the road and Lily threw up her breakfast. YUCK! Took off the carseat cover, changed her clothes, got back on the road. She threw up again. Oh no, this girl gets motion sickness! (She threw up on the way home from the beach, both of the last two times we went, and both times I attributed it to other circumstantial factors.) So we made more frequent stops, and tried to put easily washed blankets down under her, and made it to Utah with only one or two more incidents, at 8pm.
We had so much fun hanging out with Tim's grandparents :D I love Tim, who happens to be just like his mother, so I love his mother too. Well, she's not too much unlike her own parents, so of course I rather like them too! We cooked and cleaned kitchen together, we toured the garden again, we chatted, we saw Tim's aunt and uncle that live right next door and another aunt and uncle that live across town, and we spent time with Tim's sister who just had a baby.
(And I am disappointed in myself that I never thought to go take care of her postpartum like I'm planning on doing for my friend in Dallas. I think it was just that the friend DID live just around the corner from me when she got pregnant, and so the plans were laid before we ever knew we were moving away. But next time a sister-in-law of mine has a baby, she will have the option of my help after the birth!)
Jack and Lily enjoyed playing on the steps in their house, and the movies they have there that Tim got to watch as a kid. Jack enjoyed the jacuzzi bathtub, and got his first-ever bubble bath. Put regular baby soap into the water right in front of the jacuzzi intake, and you get a MONSTER bubble bath!
We left at about 5am to come home. We turned Lily's carseat to be facing forward, and Tim sat next to her and helped her to look up and forward instead of down inside the car.We made great time, stopping once in Utah and once or twice in Nevada. But the entire state of California was a traffic jam! It was Labor Day weekend, and there are lots of state and national parks there at the eastern edge of the state that people were driving home from. We stopped multiple times, and had a pretty cranky toddler by the time we got home, but we got home by 9pm and were so happy to have a clean home! And, turning Lily's seat around and helping her look up, worked, and we made it home with no vomit :D
And then I bought a plane ticket to Texas :D I arrive at 5:35pm on Saturday, October 2nd, and will hopefully go straight to visit my in-laws in Texarkana. I'd like to get 2 visits in before I have to come home, and Malina doesn't want me too far from Dallas when her baby is due, so I'd better get that first visit in as soon as I get there so I don't manage to miss her baby's birth :D Then I'll go visit again after the baby is born and before I come back home.
I am SO excited to go see my best friend and see our kids play together again. I have to be careful not to talk to Jack about it too much, b/c I don't want to make him as homesick as I am, but when I do ask him if he's excited to see Lorn and Hal, he says "I want to see them RIGHT NOW! I can't wait!" I worry that I won't be very helpful while I'm there; I want to do all her laundry and dishes and help her to welcome her newest child in peace and joy, but I'm barely hanging on to my own duties right now. But that's a whole nother post ;)
No comments:
Post a Comment