Not all doom and gloom

Sides of the road... use in case of an "emergency"

is there really a place called truth or consequences?

Ok, so I feel like I my previous posts have been more on the serious/gloomy side of things. Not all was/is sad/hard for us. For example, today it is raining and last night we had a good thunderstorm. LOVE IT! But that's not what I want to blog about today. The trip, for me at least, went by really fast. Before we left I was a little concerned about how the kids would do in the car. Sometimes driving home from school, which was about a 10 minute drive, seemed like hours. I am happy to report, despite Blake being really sick, it was actually really fun! We had a great time. By the time we got to Philadelphia, we were exhausted but the kids did really well. The part that took the longest was bathroom trips. Why is it that they always have to go after we passed the rest stops? Ok, so for the first time ever, we had to teach the girls how to go to the bathroom on the side of the road. Katelyn bawled. She DID NOT want to do this. (I did think ahead and had the girls wear skirts just in case...) So somewhere in New Mexico we had to stop. Zach jumps out and waters the farm over the hill, (TMI I know, but it was really funny because Ethan said "wow Zach, nice distance"-BOYS!) So as we are trying to get Katelyn to just take care of business so we can get going, I look over at Alyssa and she had just gotten right to business. She didn't care a bit. That was funny. Restrooms were always a little scary for me, mainly I was concerned about the kids. But no matter how stinky or smelly bathrooms were, the girls always would say, "we liked the soap, it had our favorite soap" (the foamy kind) Or it was especially fun if the soap was pink. No matter where we would go they would always talk about the soap. Girls.

The worst though was when there was no where to pull off. The kids weren't very helpful either not giving us any notice that they might have to go to the bathroom soon. Zach was screaming in agony because he had to go so bad, and we were in traffic, with no shoulder to pull off. So I thew him a pull up. Go in this Zach. Next time I need to be more specific in my directions because instead of unbuckling and putting pull up on, (we were in stand still traffic) he placed the pull up strategically over his clothes and well, so gross. The pull up didn't even get wet. Ohhhh so many stories to tell. We had a great time, after months without being together as a family it was nice to take this trip together and just have time even if it was in the car. We got to see a lot of fun things. And yes, tv was a big help. I have always loved road trips though. Very good times.

Motels were a little bit of a different story. The coolest part was that even thought the beds were really hard, Zach successfully learned to do flips on them. Cannot believe I don't have video of that!!!