Riding in Cars with Girls

We do a lot of car travelling in our house.  First of all, we kind of live in the middle of nowhere and any sort of town, grocery store, or gas station is 20-30 minutes away.  In the summer time, we fairly regularly live between two locations that are approximately eight hours apart.  There are times during the summer months that my husband and I do this trip weekly.  This being stated, it is fair to say that both of our girls are fairly used to car trips. 

I feel as though this makes us pretty chill travellers.  Typically, I can pack us up for a couple of weeks without much stress in about an hour; however, we have had our fair share of travelling disasters.  Our first trip after my oldest was born; she was 10 days old and we had to continually stop to feed her.  Our typical eight hour trip took us over 12.  Our first trip with our second whom was a terrible traveller  she screamed for three hours consecutively.  Our oldest kept saying, "she sure does cry a lot", and when she finally fell asleep we were all too scared to speak.  We took our oldest to Belize for three weeks when she was about 9 months old.  Three plane rides there and back, cramped seating, breast feeding in public and her trying to scratch the tattoos off of the guy sitting next to us, we arrived.

Each time we decide to attempt to travel with two little ones, I build it up in my head that it is going to be a horrific event.  I dread how many times they will ask, "are we there yet", how many unplanned stops we will need to make for bathroom breaks, how many gross public bathrooms I will have to encounter (I secretly believe my oldest wants to try out every public bathroom she can and loves to poop in public), and how much unsatisfying road food I will end up shoving in my face.  Travelling with kids is just so much more work.

This year we went to Tennessee and oooooh how I dreaded the car ride.  I tried to convince my husband that we should fly, but upon researching the location of the airport compared to where we were staying, he decided that flying would not make sense.  So off we went in the car.  Ten hours later we arrived at our destination to find ourselves locked out of the place we were staying at on the side of a mountain.  Literally the yard was angled down, so needless to say not a lot of outdoor play in the yard while waiting.  We spread blankets and toys on the porch and my husband and I drank wine out of the kids sippy cups until we could get the access code to get in (had I known at that time we were in a dry county I would not have shared my wine).  After six days of touring around the area, we packed everyone back into the car and headed home.  After another 10 hours, many bathroom stops, and a couple of crying fits, we made it. 

Thinking back to the specific events of each time we travel, they are pretty horrific, which is why I probably always dread going away.  Somehow each time we return home I convince myself that it wasn't so bad and it could have been worse.  Logically thinking of course it could be worse, it can always be worse.  Yet here I am in the beginning phases of planning our next family trip.

Disney here we come!