Well We Have That Out of the Way

Road Trip Number 1 with one mommy and four children.

(Notice I said number 1 as if there will be more to follow in the future.)

And really, it was to meet daddy, and on the return we caravanned home in two cars.

It was a good trip for cutting our teeth, which is good because this past weekend his unit announced the formal activation orders for the end of the year. But that's another story all together.

When we met daddy late Saturday, the first order of business was to go swimming. Benjamin is actually getting the hang of it.

But before we got there, we had to get there. So being a planner, I ran everyone around all morning Saturday wearing them out, letting them skirmish, letting them play in the backyard with the water hose in their pajamas. Saturday morning felt like breathing wool here in the Mid-South, so their pajamas didn't stay on long. And after we were sufficiently worn out, we had lunch and packed up for the road.

The ladies are very fond of swimming so far. Nicholas is a bit more reserved about being in the water and not his usual animated self.

Once we hit the road, I was confident a good nap would at least claim the girls and a movie would occupy the boys. Elaine was asleep before we left the driveway, which may have had something to do with the half an hour I spent after buckling everyone in running back and forth to the house after remembering things like swimming suits, sippy cups, Elaine's blanket, and on and on. I was ready for a nap too by then. Half an hour into the trip I was able to have a quiet conversation with my parents and brother on the phone while girls slept and boys watched Spiderman. This was easy.

Saturday night in the hotel we played musical beds. Put the girls on the air mattress, us in the bed between, the boys on the right. You want to sleep with Alida Ben? Whatever. Okay, we'll sleep over here. No, Nicholas, oh forget it, you can sleep on the air mattress. Of course you can too Ben. We'll put the girls in the other bed. Oh, they're screaming. Okay, you take one, I have the other. And that is how we landed, girls sideways on the beds kicking us in the face and pushing on us all night long.



Patric claims that he had one foot of space the entire night. I claim that Elaine was doing round-about kicks with staggering flexibility until at least 5 in the morning.

An hour into the road trip, Nicholas announces he needs to potty. I pull off the road. Judge me here if you must, but this was the plan: Pull to the way back of the Dairy Queen near an empty lot where there were no cars, if the girls didn't wake up when the car stopped, I was going to let Nicholas slip out to the bushes and do his business and we'd be on our way. The moment the car stopped, the girls eyes blinked open ruining that plan.

The boys, of course, slept well. Nicholas popped up like a ground hog from behind the bed the second his father closed the door to go in to work on Sunday morning at 6:30. We had a well mannered breakfast at the hotel and then walked around the hotel on the baggage cart for a good hour.


Back on the road, our fate was sealed with a trip into Dairy Queen to visit the potty and then, because you have to after using their bathroom, buy something messy to eat. We shuffled in and crossed the line of people waiting to order so we could get to the bathroom. The girls were cranky from just waking up, so I had one in each arm and was directing boys towards the door. While about 12 people in line just stared at us, one nice man stepped out of line to open the woman's room door for us. They thankfully had a sizable handicapped stall we all fit into without anyone having to scrape up against a nasty wall.

Daddy rescued us later Sunday morning to head off to National Guard Family Day, but not before we stopped at McDonalds and let them play for half an hour while we had a cup of coffee and planned our strategy for the event and the ride home later in the day.


Back at Dairy Queen, it took no time at all to figure out what we would fight about in the bathroom. As Ben did his thing, Nicholas managed to sneak over to the handle of the toilet. I was making sure that the shocked look on the girls faces that seemed to have frozen them in place was still working and they weren't touching anything when I heard, "NOOOOOO!" Looking up Benjamin is now both doing his business and screaming for his brother to stop. One quick look a bit further, and I see Nicholas with a devilish grin on his face and one finger on the handle to the toilet. Benjamin begins protesting very loudly that he gets to flush. And as he makes his case, Nicholas plunges the handle. Pants down but business finished, Benjamin goes into utter melt-down mode. Quick look at the girls: they are still frozen, thank heaven. Okay. "Okay. Look Ben," I say out loud as I ready myself to take advantage of the room we're in. "You can flush for me okay? Okay?!" Nicholas is still laughing even though he who called the potty break did not produce. "Oooookay," fat bottom lip out. Disaster averted, we manage to complete our trip to the potty as a party of five.

This vehicle has too many letters to remember as an acronym for a name. But it was big and that was all that mattered.

As we exited the bathroom at DQ, I swear the same 12 people were still in line staring at us. "Are they twins?" the woman who had apparently been appointed to engage us in conversation asked. Yes.

Apparently some commanders will not allow the kids to play on the vehicles. Our daddy is not that kind of daddy, although he did not load up the machine guns with blanks and let people line up to fire them again this year. That was apparently frowned upon when he let everyone do that two years ago...

And so after DQ we stopped at the next three exits because of some drama of some sort. After that I deemed that we would not be stopping anymore and we did scream our way across our state that day through rain and all. And we made it there, and we made it back.

And I'm guessing we'll do it again because really, it wasn't that bad.