Epic road trip, day 1

Well day 1 is finished. My kids were amazing! I was seriously worried but we didn't start to get the whining and hate of the car until the last 45 min or so. We brought Austin's Nintendo DS, my DS, and Stephanie brought hers. Austin was so excited. We played the multiplayer Mario kart for oh about 1.5 hrs. I made up little lunch boxes for all 3 of the 'kids' and also had a gift bag for each day with books and stuff to entertain them. I didn't even have to bust out our day 1 bags! Austin was content with the lunch box!

Border crossing was super quick. No lineup, no other cars, just a few transport trucks waiting to cross. It's so funny though, being from Ontario and crossing usually into Buffalo from Niagara Falls, this border crossing was so different. I mean, there are signs and lights and big huge security gates. Not so much here. When we cross into the states in Ontario, there is a big "welcome to the US" sign today there was nothing. Again, the lack of vehicles.... A small lineup in Ontario is a wait of less then 20 min. So weird.

But, we did break the van. Lol. About 15 min before we reached the hotel a duck like bird (it really didn't look like a duck but that's about the size it was) flew out onto the road. I let out a little scream involuntarily as we hit it. The thump! oh man. It then went under the van and we kept going. As we were driving down the road I had visions of the front of our van covered in blood and guts. Thankfully when we checked at the hotel we had a few feathers and a broken van. It cracked a piece of the grill and broke off some of the smaller grill pieces. Stupid bird.

We got in the hotel room and of course Mackenzie fell asleep about 15 min before we got to the hotel and woke up, so she wasn't ready for bed, we ended up doing 2 full laps around the hotel trying to tire her out. I had to put her in the playpen and just let her babble to herself for a while with all the lights off. Eventually she fell asleep. It's now 11pm and everyone is drifted off to sleep around me. Off to catch up on some sleep for day 2!!!

Planning planning planning!

We are going to Califonia!

We have a wedding coming up. For a friend I have known all my life. (No really, Our parents were friends before we were born, and we have been friends ever since) She's having a destination wedding in California! Since I am a bridesmaid in the wedding obviously we were going.

The way Dave's work schedule works, he is flown to and from work, but only on his scheduled days. If he needs extra time off, he can take the entire 2 weeks off or pay for his own flight back up to work. So, he has his scheduled week off, his 2 weeks of work off, then another scheduled week off. So, 4 weeks off.

The wedding fell in the middle of his work weeks, so we just figured, hey, if we have 4 weeks off we may as well do Disneyland while we are right there. (the wedding is just outside San Diego) So...... We are making the trip a big huge shebang. Our current plan is to be gone for 19 days. 19 days on the road. Yes, we might be insane.

There is a lot of planning involved in pretty much taking 3 vacations and putting them into 1. I mean, if we have to drive right through Las Vegas, Why not spend a few days there, right? So we have our Vegas vacation, our Wedding Vacation, and our Disney vacation. I mean, where do you even start?

Well, you have to start with somewhere to stay. The bride rented a vacation house near the wedding. Asked us if we wanted to stay there as well. One thing down. Then, I looked into Vegas hotels. Holy smokes. So many options and places! I found a cheap price on one hotel. I booked it, and yay!!! But then I heard from many many people that the hotel has gone downhill and it wouldn't be a very good idea. So, we cancelled it. back to the drawing board. Found another one, stalled on booking, prices went up, I kicked myself. lol. But, it's been booked. Finally we have Disney. In Walt Disney World there are all sorts of hotel choices on the resort. I grew up with Disneyworld being the place to go. I knew nothing about Disneyland. They have 3 hotel options. And yeah, they're pretty expensive. But they have good neighbour hotels there. So we booked into a good neighbour hotel with a pretty cool water park attached.

So yay for somewhere to stay. Then we also had to look at airfare. Yeah, it's expensive. Plus, we're being super awesome and bringing our babysitter to watch the kids during the wedding, the bachelor/bachelorette parties, any other wedding activities, etc. So by the time we bought 4 full priced air fares... it gets expensive. So we're driving. If we drive straight through, it only takes 29 hours. So we needed a few more places to stay. We had to figure out how much we were going to drive each day, where we were going to stay.

It has been a long planning process but we are now in the home stretch. We are driving for 2 days, doing 2 days in vegas, 6 days in the vacation house, a random night we still have no idea where we are staying, then 6 days at Disneyland and drive back home. Stay tuned for a trip recap, because I'm sure there will be quite a few of them and they are going to be awesome.

Stand Back

I'm setting all the damn germs in this house on fire.  If one more person gets some sort of illness, you may find me in the corner crying in the fetal position.

First, Austin got a Cold. Then he passed it onto me. Yay!

Tuesday I dropped Austin off at school, then went to the gym. I was just finishing at the gym when I got a text from Dave. Mackenzie just threw up. Everywhere. UGH!!!!

Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday were filled with her throwing up and blowing out her diapers. Every.single.time. We had to bust out the next size up pj's just to keep up with the speed at which we were blowing through clothes.

While dealing with her, Austin snuck under the radar. He had a very mild fever, complained of a headache, then wednesday had super red cheeks. I thought maybe it was really dry in our house since his skin is usually my first indicator of needing to crank up the humidifier. Thursday I went to get him into his pj's and BAM, head to toe rash. Yeah, that's  fun. Off to the dr's. Sidenote - Even more fun, our town doesn't have a freaking walk in clinic. Unless I wanted to wait and take him in after 5:30 pm.

3 hours later and we're done in the dr's. Austin has Fifth Disease. Ooh double yay! Thankfully, once he breaks out in the rash he's no longer contagious. But anywhere from 4-28 days previous he was. oh man. I let the schools know, I let our friends and neighbours know.

Friday? Despite still puking, Mackenzie now also has the cold and is sneezing and stuffed up. By the way, unlike her brother, she has none of it when I try to remove the goopy snot from her face. Screaming and yelling. Sigh.

And then we get to Saturday. In the morning Austin filled me in that he didn't feel good, and spent all day puking, pooping, and sleeping. The furthest he's gotten from his bed has been the bathroom. Let me tell you this, Austin is starting young with the man sick. Oh my. He could not do anything for himself yesterday. Despite getting to the bathroom, he asked me (in the saddest most pathetic voice) to carry him back to bed.  Also, every time he puked he was convinced he needed me to rub his back to help it get out.  This is the point that I publicly apologize to my mom. I was also that kid. If I was throwing up I wanted her there with me. I don't know why, moral support? No idea. But if I ever threw up, the first words out of my mouth were "Mooooommmmmmmmmmm" Even after moving out, I would call my mom and complain I was sick. Yeah. I have the female version of the Man sick. That Nyquill ( I think) commercial where the sick guy says "Pam, can you call my mom?" Cracks me up so much. Because I have uttered those words to my husband. "Dave, Can you call my mom?" I'm in so much trouble with Austin.

Also Saturday, Dave called from work to let me know that he was up at 1am puking non stop.


Have I mentioned, we are going on a road trip? Vegas, San Diego, LA, Disneyland.  Yeah, we are. In only a few short weeks. This sickness crap, it needs to stop.

A totally kid centered day

You guys will never believe this. But today, I spent just shy of 6 hours in chuck e cheese. I honestly can't believe it.

My husband took the baby to Ontario to visit for a few days. (she flies free, and thanks to airmiles, so did he) I'll be honest, with my husband's work schedule one on one time with Austin doesn't happen often. Ok, it happens very rarely.

So, since he seemed a little bummed that he couldn't go with daddy to see all his grandparents, I told him we were going to have a super special mommy Austin day.

So we pulled up to chuck e cheese about noon. Went in, got a table. Ordered our pizza, ordered my all you can eat salad bar, ended up with 125 tokens.

I gave Austin 20 or so tokens then have him sit to eat. 20 more, 20 more etc. We finally make it through all our tokens around 3/3:30. It's still not busy there and I was having fun playing games. So I went and bought another 115 tokens. We played, he went and played in the jungle gym a bit. 4:30, he starts digging into the left over pizza, I go up and get another round from the salad bar and think, perfect, now I don't have to worry about what to make for dinner! Score!

By the time we get all the tokens spent, all the tickets added, and all the prizes oh so carefully chosen, it's 5:45 when we walk out that door. 5 hours and 45 minutes spent at Chuck E Cheese. And I will be honest with you? It really didn't seem like that long! I felt like there have been other times that I've been there and the day just drags on and it feels like it's been about 12 hours when it's only been 30 minutes.

After we left, we stopped to visit a friend of mine who works at a Starbucks by Chuck E Cheese. I then thought, if we drive home now, Austin is going to fall asleep, have a 30 min nap, then be wide awake when we get home. Or I can keep him up, and we can go play with the trains in chapters.

My kid played with the trains, the legos, the plasma car, and anything else left out for kids. He played nonstop and was happy about it. We ended up leaving Chapters around 8pm. perfect. he fell asleep in the car and I put him right to bed when we got home. I suspect he had an awesome day, because really. If you were 4, would that not be a perfect day?