Tuesday, July 22, 2014

Summer kick-off Road Trip

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Lucky for me starting Friday morning I was sandwiched between the hot rugged man in the far left photo and the spunky girl in the middle photo. Like really, sandwiched. We have an extended cab pickup and let’s just say there was little room left for wiggling. Braxton was in back, middle. Emmett behind Adelle and Gage behind daddy. We were cozy, that’s for sure.

I had the important jobs of keeping Jeff awake and Adelle from throwing up. No pressure, only all of our lives and the smell of the truck for the following 15 hours! That on top of the constant job of telling Emmett how many hours we had left to go, singing “The Wheels on the Bus” with Gage, and making sure everyone had their snack of choice, water bottles (cold water please), and shoes off on, off, on, off…

All of that being said, the drive was a dream. It went really, really well. I think we were all just ready for a vacation.

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We landed for the night on Friday in Spokane at our good old friends The Jagers. The absolute most perfect stop. We were ready to be out in the fresh air. The boys got right to riding their scooters, the girls got busy making bracelets, the mom’s went and grabbed dinner. It was so nice and so relaxing.

My kids got to take bath’s in their amazing tub and Adelle had her own personal hairdresser once she was all cleaned up.

We crashed that night and early the next morning headed to Montana.

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Destination: Courtney’s Wedding!

Oh my! That’s all I can say about Saturday. It started out nice and chill. We woke up early. Got dressed. Had a special breakfast of fresh doughnuts thanks to our great hosts. Left right on schedule and hit the road with a full tank of diesel.

First stop was the Silver Dollar Bar in Montana. Favorite quote of that day by Braxton, “Do they speak a different language here?” We all laughed because we didn’t know what he was referencing and thought it was funny. We learned on the way home that he was referencing the sign he read for Coeur D’Alene. Too funny. He couldn’t sound that one out.

Anyway, back to the Silver Dollar Bar. This is where we would stop when we were kids and we were always amazing by all the silver dollars on the walls. The kids were equally as thrilled. They each got to pick out a souvenior from the gift shop. Adelle picked a necklace. Braxton picked a pocket knife (his first one ever!) and Emmett picked  a sling shot (since the rule for pocket knives is that you have to be 8). After we meandered through the store we went next door, got fuel and seriously, continued to mosey around.

When we loaded back up I planted my tush in the drivers seat. Needless to say I needed a break and I had noticed how relaxed and somehow completely removed the person in the drivers seat remained. So we get back on the freeway and all of a sudden by looking at my cell phone we realize that we were in a different time zone. Unfortunately when I planned out the day, the time and the miles and all the ends and outs I didn’t take into consideration the time change. We were instantly an hour behind. This meant that we had exactly 7 hours to get to the wedding. Like, the wedding would start in 7 hours and the distance was like exactly 7 hours away. See, in my mommy wisdom I had given us an hour overlap to make sure we could make the unpredicted stops, get there early to shower and change…. Not gonna happen.

Needless to say I did a little speeding, for the sake of being in Montana but more importantly for the sake of making it to my friends wedding on time.

The kids, once again, rock stars. We stopped one time during that 7 hours and it was for a 2 second bathroom break.  No lolly gagging this time! Obviously I was inspired ahead of time to pack a man size cooler with a week of meals, just in case… wink wink.

We made it to the wedding in West Yellowstone at 3:50, no kidding and the procession started at 4:00pm. In those 10 minutes together we managed to; change a babies diaper, dress a baby, pee on a tree, run into a public bathroom throw our head in a sink and call it “fresh,” dress while hiding behind the door of the truck, find 6 wedding outfits in the back of the truck and give each person their right outfit, socks, shoes… the whole bit. We were ready. A little bit frazzled, but ready. We walked in and took the only 4 empty chairs. One breath later, it started.

Courtney’s wedding was beautiful, amazingly BEAUTIFUL! I was so happy to be there with my family to support this special friend who means so much to me.

After the wedding that night we piled back into our truck and drove only a couple more hours to our fabulous final destination.

More on that to come!

1 comment:

Baylee said...

You have no idea how impressed I am with your family of 6 getting ready in 10 mins for a wedding!! And also by being able to handle 4 kids, on the road and having all the snacks and what-have-yous available. I am seriously frazzled just thinking about that.