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We've spent the last few days recovering from our cross country trek.  We made the drive from California to Michigan in two parts.  The first was based on the idea that if the kids were asleep we might as well keep driving and get as much of the road behind us as we could. 

We drove from Northern California (an hour and a half west of the Central Valley, which meant over 250 miles of driving just to get out of California) through Nevada, Utah and Wyoming before we hit Nebraska and knew that we needed to make at least on stop on the way there. 

So after thirty hours of driving we pulled into a hotel and spent on night in Kearney, Nebraska, before getting up and out of our room by 7:30 the next morning and getting back on the road.  That night, fourteen hours after setting off, we were finally home. 



Since we've been back I've slowly been putting all our ducks back into their neat little rows.  Mae's first therapy session is tomorrow.  I've been making repeated calls to our doctor's office and various other therapy centers trying to get referrals signed and to the right places to start her other therapies back up. 

Things I haven't said include: "Yes I am calling you for the third time in five weeks and I'm very sorry that that clearly annoys you but you still haven't shuffled that referral the five feet it needs to go to get in the rehabilitation centers inbox, despite promising that you were going to do it approximately thirty five days ago, and so yes, I am calling you again and I will continue to call until it gets done.  Or maybe not.  Because now I'm in Michigan and I can just drop in.  Would that be more likely to help you remember to get it over there?" because I'm about thisclose to not being able to be super, super sweet when I call to request something that should have been done a month ago and while I've reminded myself many, many times that you catch more flies with honey than by completely losing your mind the tenth time you make the same phone call, I am rapidly running out of honey when things just aren't getting done (especially when people are actually lying to me about why it hasn't gone through yet, since I'm hearing directly contradicting things about what each office is saying to and hearing from the other). 

Deep breath. 

It will get done though.  Eventually. 

And in the mean time we're enjoying the last few days of an unscheduled summer:

 

The Great Cross Country Road Trip

It's only 8:33 pm on Sunday night as I begin to type, but my body is still trying to convince me that it's 11:33 pm back in Michigan and so we'll have to see how this goes  (and how it went was that I fell asleep before I finished writing and finished this post this morning). 

First things first: we made it to California safe and sound! 

Secondly, since sharing a hotel room with our four kids, one of whom does not do time changes well, meant stealing as much sleep as I could from our nights, I didn't manage a single post from the road. 

So this post is a mash up of everything that happened since we set off from Michigan last Wednesday and began driving across the country. 

We drive because I would rather spend approximately forty hours in a car with my kids than spend six hours on a plane with them.

Okay not all of them. Mostly Patch.  I would take Maggie on a plane in a heartbeat.  She's so overwhelmed by the wonderfulness of flying that she seldom makes a sound.  But I'm not quite over the traumatic experience that was our last flight across the country and I love driving cross country, so a road trip it was.  With Nani and Grumpa (who Patch is now calling Bo-Pa) because Paul is staying back in Michigan being super busy.

He'll come out and drive back with us in August and we'll have another fun cross country road trip, again.

Maggie had done so well in Sadie's booster seat, so I let her try out her seat as a booster (while making sure we kept the five point harness in the car).  She did awesome at first.

She lasted as far as Indiana.  And then she decided it was hilarious (in her mind) to try to sneak out of the chest strap and we pulled over and I reassembled the car seat on the side of the road in something like fifty thousand percent humidity. 

Then we were back on the road.

 

 

We stopped for lunch in Indiana...

Before heading on to Illinois. 

And I have to say.  I love the narrow states when I'm driving east to west or west to east.  It feels like you've accomplished so much in a cross country drive when you can quickly make your way across two states.

I would have really liked to have make it all the way across Iowa the first day, but we weren't quite back in the swing of spending all day in the car and by 5 pm (after leaving at 8:30) the kids were tired out and so we stopped outside of Iowa City.

 

It was on this particular night that Patch, who has formerly loved Mickey Mouse (and who has been wearing a lot of Mickey Mouse t-shirts lately, which I'd happened to pack) saw him on television and decided he was terrifying, to the point where he was trembling after the TV was off and I had to promise him repeatedly that the TV wouldn't be coming back on.

 

 



Maggie had lots of firsts on the trip, trying on dresses that weren't pink, that she'd had for at least a year and refused to wear, that she suddenly realized she really liked.  She also started talking a lot.  And sang the Bubble Guppies theme song to herself, for much of the drive:

That first night in Iowa was wild.  No one did all that well going to sleep in a new place.  Patch was up from one to three and then Maggie woke up at four. 

We were on the road by seven, but no one had gotten all that much sleep.

Still, before lunch time we were headed into Nebraska.

And after driving straight through, with a quick stop for lunch, we made it to Wyoming as the sun was sinking down out of the sky:

We stopped in Cheyenne for our second night on the road. 

The kids were exhausted from their sleepless night in Iowa and crashed as soon as we made it up to our room.  And this time they all slept until four am.  Which meant we were on the road by six.

Driving across Wyoming with Patch was kind of hilarious.  He was like the narrator of the trip in the back of the car and we heard this during most of the time he was awake:

"Look!  Look!  A rock!  Look a rock.  I see rock.  I see rock.  Look.  I see cow.  I see rock.  Look!  Look!"

And he was so excited every single time that he said it that it never got old. 

 

 

We stopped for lunch in Salt Lake City.

 

But by bedtime that night we were tucking the kids in, in Elko, Nevada. 

The fact that the kids slept in until 4:15 Pacific Time felt like a small victory and we were on the road again by six.  Here's Maggie waiting by the door.  She was so impatient to get back into the car each morning:

We drove straight on through Nevada.

And finally we crossed the border into California.

And before dinner time we were at Nani and Grumpa's house up in the mountains, which will be our home for summer while Paul is busy getting things done and working back in Michigan. 

The kids almost slept in until 5 this morning, which is huge, because the last time we were here for two weeks she never slept past 3.  Mae's internal clock is not easily reset. 

We've already had a few adventures with the wildlife (involving a skunk and a buck), and we're enjoying the dry heat (I still haven't quite gotten used to the humidity back home) and lots of water fights on the porch! 

Now to go get dressed.  Sadie's already made me promise we'll have a water fight this morning! 

5 Lessons I've Learned While On Road Trips with Our Kids

I love road trips.  I've loved them since I was in seventh grade scribbling in a notebook covered with stickers, dreaming of the road trips that I imagined I would take with my best friends when we graduated from high school.

During college my best friend and I spent a lot of time on weekends and during the summer driving up and down the Pacific Coast Highway with surf boards strapped to the top of my little yellow Volkswagon Beetle camping and surfing and planning out longer, out of the country trips that we never got around to taking.

The longest road trips I've been on, however, have come after marrying Paul and having kids.  When Maggie was not-quite-two and Sadie was not-quite-four we drove from South West Florida to Northern California.

When the girls were two and four we drove from Northern California to Michigan, spent one night in Michigan (and found a house to live in) and then drove from Michigan to South West Florida (where we rented a U-haul and packed up our house in record time) and then headed north again straight back to Michigan for the start of a new school year.

I also drove from Michigan to Montana with the girls (while in the third trimester with Patch) by myself for one of my best friend's wedding, and when Patch was a little over a month old we drove from Michigan to Massachusetts.

And we had fun!  We've spent eight, twelve and even fourteen hour days on the road without a single tear involved.  Paul and I have both been a little sad that the last two years were so crammed full of studying that we've hardly had time (or an excuse) to head out on the open road.

That's my long winded way of saying that we have a bit of experience in the road-tripping-with-kids department.

Here are the lessons we've learned and the tricks we've used along the way:

1.  Don't Plan To Far Ahead 

On our first long road trip I had everything mapped out.  I was sure that we wouldn't be able to drive more that three hundred miles a day with the girls being not-yet-two and almost-four.

Sure they did great in the car around town, but could I really expect them to spent longer stretches in our mini van as we drove across the southern part of the United States.

So I made motel reservation and plotted and planned just about every stop.  And while it worked out I later realized that it might not have been the best way of going about things.

I mean, we had a lot of fun, but on subsequent trips I've learned that there's a lot to be said for looking at the map, noting where things are (and maybe even checking out attractions that we'll be driving past)and what time we'll hopefully get there and then seeing how things go.

That way we could stop at sites that looked interesting in person, or take a break when the kids (or adults) were tired.  It also meant we could push on further than we'd thought would possible and spend more time on another day exploring a new area.

2.  Use Diversions Sparingly

Before one of our long trips my parents gave our family a little travel DVD player.

I quickly realized that to make the DVD player as effective as possible it was best to keep it loaded, charged and hidden and out of sight until we actually needed it.

If the kids were happy looking out the window while Sadie chattered away or while we listened to the radio than the DVD player would stay hidden.  Often times that meant that it stayed off all day.

On the other hand when someone was cranky or tired or bored the appearance of the DVD player instantly broke through the monotony of what was becoming a long afternoon and the kids would immediately quiet down.

I've used this same car trip strategy with snack and other small treats I've tucked away and it works well. Instead of handing over everything at once and having the kids bored with their little snacks or surprises after fifteen minutes we've had good luck with spacing that sort of thing out so that we get more mileage out of them.

3.  Books on Tape

Or CD.  Or MP3.  Or whatever car actually have these days.

Ours has a tape deck and a CD player that skips non-stop if the car is actually in motion and almost non-stop if the car is parked, so tapes it is.

After the first road trip I got the idea of using a tape recorder to record myself reading the girls' favorite books, along with some classics.

These tapes became an instant hit.  They still listen to them.

If I run into a store and Paul is in the car with the four kids (which include a certain two year old who likes to scream "Help me!  Help me!  No!!!!  Go!  Go!" if the car comes to a complete stop for more than a split second... and sometimes just if we decelerate...) he still pops the tape in and they listen to me read We're Going on a Bear Hunt and Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories and while Paul almost dies of boredom from listening to the same tape for the three hundred and twenty seventh time, the kids love it.

They especially love it when they hear me say "just wait Maggie, we'll read that next" and you hear not-yet-two year old Maggie squeal in response in the background of the tape.

4. Organize, Organize, Organize

One of the best investments I made after our first road trip was in cheap little vacuum seal travel bags (that didn't need an actual vacuum).

Instead of throwing all of our stuff in suitcases I very carefully packed a days worth of outfits in each vacuum bag.  That meant one outfit for each person went in each bag and then I rolled the bags so all the air was out of them.

I then stacked those bags in an easily accessible bag, near the bag with toiletries and pajamas and whatever else we might need and when it was time to unload for the night  we just pulled out one days worth of clothes and brought it inside.

It made it much easier for Paul who was lugging our bags up and down staircases and in and out of motels day after day.

5. Roll with the Punches

When we broke down in North Platte, Nebraska it felt like the end of the world.  We had two days until we needed to be in Michigan to find a house, were low on funds and the first car place we were towed to told us that they couldn't even begin to work on the car for several days.

Then a small shop saved the day for a fraction of the cost we'd been imagining and we ended up with great stories about kind, helpful people and several stories about the subsequent walk to a playground while we waited for the car to be fixed, where I had to squeeze my gigantically pregnant self up to the top of a very tall slide to rescue a certain four year old who'd gotten scared at the top (a tale that's still told to this day).

What had seemed like a disaster at the time ended up being one of the most memorable days in one of our most memorable road trips we've taken so far.


I have a road trip coming up in the not so distant future and hopefully the lessons of road trips past will serve us well as we embark on another trip and see what the open road has in store for our little group!