Driving Miss Crazy

My number one superpower of choice would be Teleportation.  Numero uno.  Why?  Because I have kids.  And riding in the same vehicle with them (unless it is a train where they are in one car and I am in another) is an exercise in all kinds of torture.

Now, to clarify, I do actually love my children.  Lots and lots.  And I could probably not hate traveling with them if they were all school aged.  Maybe.  But for now, getting in the van with the load of crazies is the equivalent of being thrown into some kind of minimum security prison for annoying people.  There is no escape--I mean, I guess I could throw myself from a moving vehicle, which on occasion I might have considered, but realistically, no escape.  Someone is constantly hollering for the warden or running a tin cup back and forth over the bars.  Fights break out approximately every ten seconds, and they are piping in only the Frozen soundtrack on repeat for all eternity.

We recently drove a million hours to the middle of nowhere Texas for a family wedding.  I got all supermom proactive and made the three big kids binders with road trip activities.  I packed healthy snacks like apples and bananas, audio books to edify us along the way, and a big, happy, positive attitude.

I'm sure you can see where this is going.

The problem with this trip was that it literally required us to drive for 5 straight days.  I won't go into the details, but trust me on this.  It was five nearly full days of driving, stopping along the way only to eat, potty break, or nurse the baby.

We were trucking along pretty well until the day of the rehearsal.  I was up most of the night with the baby and wasn't feeling so hot.  You know that yuck feeling you get when you don't sleep?  Nope.  Not just tired.  The stomach flu that ravaged our house when Luke was born finally caught up to me.  So with 6+ hours of driving that day, I found myself puking on the side of Texas highways and slowly losing my will to live.

We drove through torrential rain, fierce wind, and even an ice storm.  All my hopes and dreams of a happy, healthy road trip went out the window right alongside all the vomit.  (Too much?  Probably.)  By the last day, everyone was pretty miserable.  The van looked like a Nabisco factory had exploded inside of it, the kids were at each other's throats, and it was all we could do just to hold on to the last ounce of sanity we had.  I didn't care what anybody ate, or how much, what anybody watched, or how much.  At one point in the trip, Andrew was begging for throwing stars from this weird gas station/weaponry dealer.  Mike talked him down to a bag of Hot Cheetos.  And we actually paid Reece to take a nap.

Good parenting aside, we all survived the trip and are only a little worse for the wear.  So please don't be alarmed if you ask me how my "vacation" was and I start weeping and singing "Let it Go."  PTSD: Post Travel Stress Disorder.  I'm sure it will clear up in a few decades when all the kids have moved out of my van. 

Here we are at the reception...don't we look sane?