Our planning began on Sunday last week. My aunt and uncle from Ark came up for her and my uncles (her twin brother) 50th birthday. They only stayed the weekend. My uncle (her husband) told my grandma that her kids were planning a little surprise dinner for her birthday the next weekend. We had planned on attending. We'd go down on Friday morning, stay the night at my cousins house, then come back early Saturday morning to be able to make it to my nephews birthday party by 1:30 Saturday. It was gonna be a short trip. It was gonna be a little stressful with 3 kids. But we could handle it. It's not the first time I'd been to Ark with kids. Granted I was also one of those kids, but whatever. The point I'm making is I could do it.
My kids are all 3 pretty good travelers. Gaige and Owen have both been on long car rides, I took them both to Ark when they were 6 & 1yr for my cousins wedding. We also went to Georgia when Gaige was just 1 1/2. So I knew they would do fine. This was Dawn's first trip further than just a few hours though. To tell you the truth, I was nervous about her being in the car that long. She gets car sick and she gets annoying when she gets bored. So it was pretty hit or miss as far as how well she would do.
We were all set to leave by Thursday night, I had everyone packed. Then I get a call from my grandma saying that my other uncle told her that there was supposed to be a big storm hitting on Friday and we would most likely be driving right through it. So my grandma got nervous. She wanted to leave that night instead of the next morning. I was good with that. I prefer to travel at night anyway because there is less traffic and you can make better time. I called my mom who was also traveling with us, and we agreed.
My grandma and mom (and Gaige) picked us up at 8pm that night. We didn't leave my town until about 9:30pm though because Gaige insisted that we stop at McDonalds before. This kid.
Everyone watched movies and slept the whole way there. No incidents. No real fighting. We had a little trouble with Gaige and Dawn because she is a "don't touch me" type of kid. But we got there. At almost 6am Friday morning. Ugh.
We stopped at a hotel in Jonesboro but they didn't have anything (or so she said) and we ended up at a Motel 6. It wasn't horrible. I went through the room and made sure there were no bugs or grossness. I am so picky about hotel rooms. I hate them as it is, and I'm usually really on top of reviews and such. This ones didn't suck so I went in figuring it wouldn't be too bad. I could have done without the pot smell in the 2nd room we had to get because there were 6 of us, but whatever.
We slept until about 11am and then got up and headed out again. We had breakfast at IHop (something I haven't done since before I had Gaige) and then it was off to my cousins house.
We sat around her new place for a couple hours while we waited for my aunt to get there. She was so surprised! It was really nice sitting and talking to my cousins also. I hadn't seen 2 of them since my grandpas funeral (I hate saying that...hate hate hate) and the other 2 I hadn't seen in years.
We headed home from her house at about 8:30pm. The worst part of the ride home was that while climbing into the car we let in a ton of mosquitoes. I hate mosquitoes! They ate us alive! We killed most of them and stopped at a Mcdonald's for a snack & to chase them out. We were home free after that. Made it home around 4am Saturday morning.
It was such a whirl wind trip.
But it was a good time!
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