Road Trip

My AMAZING friend Tara offered to drive with me to see my family last week. We may be crazy for thinking it was a fun idea to load up 4 kids under 3 into a suburban and drive for 12+ hours each way...but we all came back friends and can already laugh about it all. We did learn a very valuable lesson, though, on "what not to EVER say on a roadtrip with your children". I thought, for your sake, I would share these with you so that you don't make the same mistake we did.

1) Never say "Aren't you amazed at how great our kids are? So flexible, so laid back, we are so blessed" because you can guarantee that approximately 46 seconds after you utter those words, a complete and total melt-down will occur

2) Never say "Can you believe we are making such great time? We are right on schedule. I'm so impressed with us" because you can guarantee that at the next major city there will be a huge accident, shutting down the two major interstates and adding 2 hours to your trip.

3) Never say "Well, if we had to get stuck in traffic at least we are amazing navigators and found this incredible detour" because you can guarantee that your incredible detour road will merely cross over the interstate you were trying to get back to and will have exactly ZERO access to such interstate...adding yet another 30 minutes to your trip.

4) Never say "I'm positive we can make it 30 more minutes until the next town before we get gas. The car would have to be leaking gas to finish a 1/4 tank before then" because you can guarantee that the next time you stop you will have a scare where someone tells you that you car actually IS leaking gas (check out Tara's blog for an amazing indicator of the IQ levels we experienced at one McDonald's).

Yep, that about sums it up. We spent the rest of the drive just shaking our heads and saying "don't say it, just DON'T SAY IT".

Tara has some adorable pictures of our munchkins on the trip on her blog as well. Too bad we don't have a video documentary of the actual car time. It was AMAZING.

Thanks again, Tara. It was a blast!!
ABL