How to turn a 6 hour road trip into a 9 hour trip...

Easy - take along 4 kids and a dog! ;) I always say it's an 8 hour trip, but really it would be a 6 hour trip with no kids... but the past few times we had taken that trip to visit family it was more of an 8 hour trip with 3 kids... but this time with the addition of a baby it has become a 9 hour trip! Every additional child seems to add an hour.


The wonderful thing about nursing: portable food!! No packing of bottles, formula and nursery water. No worrying about having enough clean bottles and cleaning bottles on the road and making sure all those bottles get clean for the trip home... (which sucks in a motel room!). But there is one downside to nursing when travelling. You just really can't do it while driving. Which means you have to stop for about 30mins.


All told the trip wasn't too bad! We had no major meltdowns. Again, I offer my praise to the inventor of the portable DVD player!! If it wasn't for that we never would have survived the trip!


It was nice visiting with my family. They were all anxious to see the new baby. Unfortunately we got there just before screamy colic time. So we visited over screaming and crying... And same thing when we went to visit my husband's mom, he screamed the entire time. I felt awful :( At least his mom had come visiting up here just a couple of weeks earlier, before the colic started. At least I had some extra hands to try calming the little guy down, or at least to give my arms a little of a break.


I was a little disappointed in my reunion with friends. Several months ago when plans were being made I was sure to pitch the idea of a cookout, as I was going to have a new baby. The big plans were for a night out on the town, which I knew I just couldn't swing with a newborn. So there were half-assed plans for the cookout, and as the time grew near I was really hoping some of my old friends would show. We started a group on facebook, and there were almost 120 people who joined. Out of those, about 35 said they were coming (some from out of town, and some still living in the town). I think in between the months of planning a lot of people forgot about it. Not me. I was really looking forward to it. I'm a transplant in a rural area with barely any population... my social life at this point consists of stalking facebook and blogs ;) So I counted down the months, weeks, days... and cried my eyes out when my husband tried to cancel the trip because we really couldn't afford it, and totally couldn't afford a motel room (which meant we had to stay with my mom and pack food for the trip, as well as eat at mom's while we were there rather than hitting our fave local restaurants).

Since most people from out of town got in on Friday, they arranged to go out on Friday night as well as Saturday night. The cookout was Saturday afternoon - and as it was the hottest day of the summer (97!) and humid as hell, and probably a lot of people were hungover, only 5 of my friends showed up... it was a little disappointing. It was nice to catch up with the few friends that showed though. One of my good friends showed up just as everyone was leaving. I felt bad, but by that point all my kids were completely drenched, screaming and completely done.

Oh well. The friend that set the date because she was coming though on a business trip said that she will be making that business trip every year, so we can plan another get together next year. Hopefully more people will make it, and next year I will actually be able to go out with them! So now I'll just be counting the months until then ;)