What a trip!!

We went to see Brent's family for Easter and had a great time. We didn't want to leave, but we had to. Apparantly the universe was conspiring against us, though.

We planned to leave around 3 or 4, but ended up leaving the FIRST time at about 5:45pm. Samantha fell asleep in less than 10 minutes. How do I know that? Because she was asleep when we had to turn around and go back...about 10 minutes after we left.

You see, there was a bug on the inside of my window and I rolled the window down a little in order to get the bug out of the car. But then the window wouldn't go back up. We stopped the car and restarted it. It still wouldn't go back up. Brent tried pulling up on the window while I held the switch up. It still wouldn't go back up. He unrolled it all the way to see if that would change things. Nope. It still wouldn't go back up. And now it was ALL the way down.

We started driving again, but then I looked at the sky. It looked like it might rain. And Jacob was already starting to cry from the wind blowing on him, and I couldn't figure out a way to keep it off him. And I really didn't want to get soaked and have to ride all the way home like that.

So we turned around to see if Brent's parents had a tarp we could borrow. Thank goodness we were still so close by!

When we got to the house, Brent talked to Mom because Dad was out feeding the animals. She said that Dad's car had the same problem before and Dad was able to fix it, so she sent us on to the shop and said that she would have Dad come over there. Jacob was still crying, so I started feeding him and he ended up falling asleep.

Dad, Brent and Dave worked on the window for quite a while. They had to take the inside of the door completely apart. But apparantly the motor is just bad. And they couldn't get the window back up. They did have cardboard, plastic and duct tape, though, so they concocted a way to "board up" the window for the drive home. It really worked quite well. I guess duct tape really does fix anything. :) Except that you can't see through cardboard. So I sat in the back seat to be able to see out the window so that I could tell Brent if it was safe to go or not. (That actually turned out to be a good thing beacuse I was able to give Jacob his paci and I was also able to take care of Samantha.)

We left for the second time at 7:15pm. Samantha did not fall asleep this time. I guess that nap was wnough to tide her over. Thirty-five minutes into the trip, Jacob started crying because he was hungry. So I kept trying to give him his paci, Samantha kept singing to him and he kept screaming for about 10 minutes until we got to the next town.

I can totally understand why you could be tempted to take your child out of the car seat to feed them. It is brutal to just sit their and listen to your child cry and not do anything to make it better! (Notice I said TEMPTED. I would never actually do it, because I am a rule follower and I am a very "what if" kind of person. What if we actually were in a wreck...he could be killed. What if we were pulled over...they would take our kids away from us, etc.) From now on, I will ALWAYS have a bottle with us...just in case. Then I could pump, then feed him a bottle in his car seat if necessary.

We stopped at a Sonic and I took Jacob out of his seat and fed him, while Brent kept the van door open and fed Samantha french fries. At 8:45 we pulled out again. It was already past all of our bedtimes. And if nothing else happened and we didn't have to make any more stops, we still had 1.5 hours to go.

But of course, that was not the end of it.

About 15 minutes down the road, Samantha started coughing. And promptly threw up. Four times. All over her pillow and herself. And she did not like it. And she cried. And she threw up again. The last time I was at least able to get the bucket up for her to puke in. I'm not really sure why that mattered. She was, after all, already covered with puke. And we didn't have any towels or trash bags. I am NEVER traveling without both of those items again! And we were in the middle of nowhere on the interstate. With nowhere to stop in sight. There were two good things about this. One was that Jacob was asleep so I only had Samantha to worry about. And the second was that she managed to not get ANY puke on her lambie :)

Samantha was NOT happy about being covered in puke. She wanted her pillow off her lap. She kept telling me "Yucky" and then crying a little more. But I told her to keep the pillow on her lap, and even held it on when she tried to push it off, because we didn't have anywhere to put it. (Does that make me a terrible mom?) She would calm down but then remember the puke and start all over again. I kept telling her that we would stop and clean her up as soon as Daddy could find a safe place for us to stop.

At this point, Samantha started saying "Droid. Pampa phone." and then giggled. So we said droid with her and that made her laugh more. For the most part, that took her mind off the fact that she was covered in puke. Yeah!

About 10 minutes later we came to a town. It was a town that we frequently stop in so we knew that it had a large restaraunt/convenience store and that the restrooms were very nice and well kept. Thank goodness!

Brent went inside and asked for a trashbag and paper towels, so we were able to get the pillow off her lap and start wiping Samantha and the seat belt off a little.

I took Samantha inside and gave her a sponge bath in the sink while Brent cleaned the carseat as best he could and then covered it with burp cloths and the crib pad we had with us. Samantha had fun sitting on the sink counter with her feet in the sink while I bathed her, but she was very glad to get her jammies on because she was starting to get very cold.

We put her back in the seat and put another burp cloth between her and the seatbelt in an effort to keep the stinky, wet seat belt from getting her yucky again.

We still had an hour of driving if nothing else happened. And thankfully the rest of the trip was uneventful. Samantha fell asleep quickly. She did cough in her sleep and I most definitely had the bucket ready just in case, but she didn't throw up again. She cried in her sleep quite a bit, but she did calm down when I stroked her hair and talked softly to her. And Jacob kept on sleeping.

We finally made it home at 11:15pm. 5.5 hours after we originally left. The trip is supposed to be 2.25 hours (if we can make it with only one 10 minute stop, that is) But we did make it home safely. And it turned out to be a very good thing that I was in the backseat because I would not have been able to reach Samantha to help her from the front seat.

Brent will be taking the van to the shop immediately after work, so he and I completely unloaded the van instead of leaving it for today. And we took Samantha's car seat out so that I can take it apart and wash it all this evening.

It was midnight before we were ready to get into bed. But when I took Jacob out of his car seat, he started waking up. So I put his lotion on him, then got his jammies on him and fed him. So neither Brent nor I got much sleep last night. I wonder if we can convince the kids to go to bed REALLY early tonight.

What a trip! I hope we don't have a repeat of that experience anytime soon...or EVER!