Recently, Ben's sister and her family moved out to North Dakota, for her husband's work. We miss them a lot, and last weekend, their daughter Elizabeth got baptized, so we decided to drive out and visit them!
It is about a twelve hour drive, so we prepared accordingly. We got the DVD in our car working (we've never tried before and frankly, I'm surprised it worked). I bought a TON of food for the car trip, and brought along a bunch of toys. I steeled myself for hours of crying (and Rylee's part), so I wouldn't get overly frustrated if she did end up crying a whole bunch.
The car trip went really well. We left our house at 6:30 am. We drove behind Danny and Lindi and Hannah (who also went out), and even though we weren't in the same car, it was nice to drive out together. We had to stop pretty soon after leaving (I think we were less than an hour and half out) for Parker to use the bathroom, but after that, we were able to go pretty long stretches without stopping.
I wasn't sure how long the movies would keep their interest, so I tried to wait before starting the first one. They were excited to watch, though, so I turned on the first movie about 40 minutes into the drive. I shouldn't have been worried. They--and especially Parker--were riveted by the movies the entire drive.
A little bit after our first stop, Rylee started to fuss, which I thought was odd. She usually does really well on our three hour car trips, until the last half an hour. A minute later, she threw up her yogurt drink. She faces backward in our car, and we were on really winding roads. The poor thing got car sick. We had Ashtyn and Parker in the very back so that I could sit in the middle next to Rylee, and be able to reach all three girls during the drive. I cleaned Rylee up the best I could with wipes (and her kitty cat, a little stuffed animal that she's really attached to), got rid of her blanket (which was dirty), and got her a new blanket.
A few minutes later, she threw up all over everything again. I got rid of her new blanket (but didn't get her a new one) and cleaned everything up again as good as I could. Then I gave her some water and got out some potato chips for the girls. I was hoping the salt would settle her stomach. We got onto straighter roads after that and she was fine the rest of the trip.
Rylee was the most maintenance on the trip. She cycled through different toys, kind of watched the movies sometimes, sang at the top of her lungs (she was singing Let it Go and Say Geronimo and even though it was loud, it was so adorable), and got mad at us a lot. She didn't really cry very much, but she was not happy to be in the car that long. She would say, "I'm going to my room!" and "Get me out of here!" really loud. She also started saying, "I need to go to the bathroom!" a lot because every time her sisters said it, we all got out of the car. It never worked for her, much to her chagrin.
Ashtyn did well too. She played with some toys and drew some, but mostly watched the movie. Parker didn't play with anything the whole time, she just watched the movies. When we were at Melissa's the next day, she asked if we could drive home that day so she could watch more movies. The one thing she did ask for the entire time was food. "I'm hungry" was the constant refrain. I tried to string out the snacks, and it did last us the whole trip.
Rylee did take a small nap, but it was only half an hour, and she did cry a little after waking up, though not for very long. I was disappointed her nap was so short, and that Parker and Ashtyn didn't nap, after waking up so early. The worst part for Rylee was that night, though. We had made a last stop (or so I thought) and I put on a movie for the older girls, hoping that would keep them quiet while Rylee went to sleep. She was so tired and we had over two and half hours left. She cried and cried, then her eyelids would droop, but then she would look up at the movie wide eyed. I was mad at myself for putting the movie on, because Ashtyn and Parker were looking tired enough to sleep, too, but they wouldn't while the movie was on. Rylee cried for about an hour and a half before falling asleep. While she was still crying, we stopped, which was frustrating for me. Ben got out and used the bathroom, and while he was gone, Rylee fell asleep. I needed to use the bathroom, but didn't want to wake up Rylee, so I just waited.
Rylee slept the rest of the way, and after the movie ended, Parker and Ashtyn slept as well. I sat in the front with Ben for that last half hour and we were able to talk.
Because of the time difference, it was after 9:30 when we got there (8:30 our time). When we got there, it was a flurry of getting the beds set up so I could get the kids in bed. It was almost 9:30 our time before I got the kids all in bed and asleep.
I used the bathroom real fast after getting them settled, then came to sit on the stairs outside the room they were in. The door was ajar and I just wanted to make sure they settled down instead of getting up. As I was sitting there, I saw a big brown spider crawl into the room. I was about to go get Ben when I saw an even bigger one crawl into the room. At this point, I was totally freaked out. Then another spider crawled under my shoes (which I had taken off), so I went and got Ben to kill it so I could help unload the car.
He rescued my shoes and we got the rest of the stuff unloaded. Then I got ready for bed and went down to the room. We were sleeping on mats on the floor and I was very anxious about the spiders. I couldn't settle my body down, despite being exhausted. I was too tense to sleep.
Then, while I was laying there trying to calm myself down, the giant spider I'd seen earlier started crawling on the wall above Parker. I immediately messaged Ben to come kill it. Then it started crawling towards Parker and I freaked out, messaging Ben again. He came and killed it. Then we moved our mats away from the walls, since the spiders liked to crawl along the walls, and he found another spider by our bed and killed it. We didn't see any more spiders our entire trip, but I did not sleep well that night!
The next day was nice. We got to relax all morning. There was a park across the street that the kids could go play at. Adam and Danny took the babies on bike rides over and over again, and watched them at the park. We just sat around and visited and I read some in my book.
After the babies' naps, we drove over to Dickinson to go to Adam and Melissa's favorite restaurant, Pizza Ranch. It's a pizza buffet and was pretty good. Afterwards, we went into the arcade they have their and Melissa got the kids a bunch of tickets to play some games. Their favorite was the laser room, a small, dark room where you had to try to avoid the lasers while hitting the buttons on different walls. Parker and Ashtyn are really into Kim Possible right now, so they loved it.
After they ran out of tickets, the kids all got to pick 100 points of prizes, so they got some candy and little toys. They had a lot of fun there together.
While we were there, Rylee had a messy diaper. We were the only ones in the arcade, so I decided to just change it there, but it turned out to be a blow out diaper that got on everything. I changed it and got it all cleaned up, but she had no clothes after that. Then she had another diaper that was pretty bad, though it didn't get on everything that time. The joys of traveling with little kids.
The next morning, we rushed to get ready for church because we didn't want to be late, but then ended up being ready an hour early and had to find ways to entertain the kids without them getting un-ready. Then we drove the forty minutes to Melissa's church and went in. Church was pretty rough. Ashtyn was mad at me because I wouldn't let her sit with her cousins until after the sacrament, Parker had an accident on the carpet midway through sacrament (luckily I brought extra clothes this time and I cleaned her up, Ben got the carpet cleaned up), and Rylee was a struggle the entire time.
Rylee has been hard during church since she started moving. She loves to explore and is harder to distract for very long. We used cereal at first--we would give her one piece at a time. When she got tired of that, we tried toys, but she had no interest in them. Then I tried drawing, which failed. Finally, I got out the stickers, which entertained her fairly well (with constant vigilance on our part) until the end of sacrament.
The baptism took place after sacrament. Between sacrament and the baptism, the kids ran around together. I felt a little bad that they weren't being more reverent, but I also knew that they had just sat through a 40 minute car trip, over an hour of sacrament, and were about to be asked to sit quietly again for another half hour, plus the 40 minute car trip home.
The baptism was beautiful. They had Danny speak and Lindi and Hannah did a musical number together. During the actual baptism, I had to take Rylee away because she was crying--she wanted to jump into the water too. She was so mad that she didn't get to swim.
After the actual baptism, I just held Rylee and wouldn't let her get down. That ended up being easier and she seemed resigned to it for the most part.
Afterwards, we were originally going to go to the park, but it was really yucky at first. It was funny because Ben had gone outside and wasn't sure we should go. I was with Melissa and we decided we could go for a little bit to let the kids play. I went out, then came back in and had decided after going outside that we shouldn't go. Melissa still wanted to (because Elizabeth wanted to), then she came outside to get in her car and decided not to go. It was really cold and the wind was bad. It was really windy out there the whole time we were there.
The rest of the day we just relaxed together and the kids played. They took some bikes over to the bike park with Adam for awhile and all came home crying because they didn't want to be done. We did an early bedtime and just visited after putting the kids down.
It was hard to leave family, but early next morning, at 7:30 am (6:30 our time), we left. We had to stop for gas, but no one got out, and we were on the way. It was beautiful out there, with all the fields, and the roads were mostly straight, which was nice for driving. I just started the movies right away.
The ride home was pretty rough. No one wanted to be in the car anymore and we all wanted to just be home, but we made it and Rylee cried hardly at all again. Rylee took an hour and a half nap in the car, which made me really happy. We missed Casper, so we didn't stop for a long time after our first stop, which was rough. I was having a hard time feeling nauseous and wanted food, and Parker ended up having two accidents in her car seat on the way home.
For dinner, we stopped at a Denny's that was part of a gas station. None of us were impressed with their food, but we got hot food and they had Kraft macaroni, so at least Rylee ate her dinner.
I learned my lesson from the trip out and turned off the movies earlier. All three girls fell asleep really fast. Ashtyn and Parker slept until we got home. Rylee woke up a couple times and cried for a couple minutes, but then went back to sleep quickly. Ben and I just talked to survive the last two and half hours.
I listened to a couple audiobooks during the trip. My main book was The Great Alone, which was over 15 hours. I also finished Atomic Habits (I had started that one before the trip), listened to I am Malala (which was 7 hours, but I listen on time and a half), and started the second book in the Bartimaeus trilogy before the girls fell asleep and I went up with Ben. I don't know how I would have gotten through the car trip without the audiobooks--or the movies for the kids. Ben listened to the first half of Oathbringer (it's a 50 hour audiobook).
We got home around 9:30, and all the girls stayed asleep when we turned off the car. By the time we got them settled and the car unloaded (that's my minimum on a trip; if I empty the car right when we get home, I'll usually unpack the next day, but if I don't, the stuff stays in the car for way too long), and got ourselves ready for bed, it was after 11:00. The rest of this week has been all about recovering and catching up on stuff.
It was a long trip, and we love being home again, but I'm glad we went. The baptism was beautiful and it was so nice to see Melissa and her family. We miss them so much.
