We Survived Our Road Trip

A few weeks ago M's sister got married in Washington D.C. The wedding was on a Thursday and the kids already had Monday off school. We only had to take the kids out of one extra day of school and then we had 9 days for trip. Because we had the extra time to work with, it was SO much more economical to drive instead of fly.

If you don't factor in your sanity.

Things We Hoped to Do on the Road Trip	Things We Expected to Really Do on the Road Trip	Things We ACTUALLY Did on the Road Trip
Get such an early start and make such great time and feel so alert that we just drive straight on through the whole 1500 miles.	Get tired slightly past half way and find a nice inexpensive hotel to stay in for the night.	Wander around Jackson Tennessee for 45 minutes trying to find a non-scary hotel room only to finally find out that all the hotels are booked up because Lane college is having their homecoming that weekend.
Set the cruise control and make great time.	Hit a little traffic here and there and get in later than hoped for.	Get detoured to small country roads in the middle of the night for 30 miles because the interstate was closed just outside Memphis TN  AND hit such bad traffic in Virginia that we actually put the car in park and  turned off the engine for 30 minutes.
Enter an address in the GPS and get accurate, concise directions for getting there.	Listen to the GPS say “Recalculating” every time we had to get off the freeway to pee.	Have the GPS lose satellite reception every time we looked at it wrong.  Have it choose yet another slightly different route for getting there every time we tried to drive to the same place.  Develop suspicion that the GPS is getting paid for every unique street it makes us drive on.  End up renaming the GPS “Willis” so that we can start saying, “What choo talkin’ ‘bout, Willis?”
Only go to the bathroom at meal stops.	Make pit stops every 2 hours.	Pee early and pee often. Have the dedication to pee 3 times in an hour, whether we need to or not. Pee before the meal, after the meal, and again 20 minutes after we finally get back on the road.  ALL THE SAME KID.  Get our drink privileges taken away.
Sleep.	Stare out the window bored.	Pick up Kate’s princess dolls from the floor of the back seat while telling the kids to stop bugging each other.
Sing songs together.	Listen to music.	Have the kids yell at each other to stop every time one of them starts happily singing a song.
Have Claire and Scott do homework while Kate played happily with toys.	Let Kate listen to a movie with headphones on while the big kids did their homework.	Inform Scott that we were not going to play the Barbie Fairytopia movie over again so he could hear it this time because we didn’t want his testicles to shrivel up and fall off.
Read out loud as a family from the Little House on the Prairie book series.	Watch a few movies.	Try to ignore threats from Kate that she will “be bossy” if we didn’t let her watch the movie she wanted… again.
Discuss family goals and aspirations.	Tell the kids to stop bugging each other.	Insist that Kate ask politely before you pick up her princess dolls from the floor of the back seat... again.
Have a neat, organized car because we had thought of everything.	Need to wash and vacuum out the car when we got back.	Cleaned up spilled orange Powerade with a pillowcase.  Get our drink privileges taken away… again.
Have the children entertain themselves so that M and I can read and talk about grown up things.	Risk throwing out our backs passing out books and snacks.	Risk throwing out our backs picking up Kate’s princess dolls from the floor of the back seat… again.
Eat up leftover snack foods from around the house.	Let the kids pick out few new snack foods from the grocery store.	Wander around Wal-Mart for half an hour buying snack food only to have the children crumble the food up and leave it in Lake Powerade.
Attend a fabulous wedding where we get to spend time with family and friends and celebrate the marriage of a beloved sister and her new husband.	Be present at the wedding.	Attend a fabulous wedding where we get to spend time with family and friends and celebrate the marriage of a beloved sister and her new husband.