Cat Spring or Bust

You can't imagine my excitement at the prospect of traveling for two days and thousands of miles with two munchkins and a Boxer in a car (Note: Excitement equals 'fear' and 'trepidation'). Here were two kids that could barely make it to Dominick's without letting out a banshee scream, how were we going to make it all the way to Baba and Gdaddy's house?


Baba arrived in Chicago on Friday afternoon. My exhaustion was at all time high. Sasha has switched back to 'super challenging mode' and the little miss has decided that she wants to be the next big Chatty Cathy (seriously, the girl never stops talking and only seems to have one volume - LOUD). We discussed leaving on Saturday (I've never seen Nathan more motivated to 'help'. He detailed my car, loaded the entire thing in record time. The man was on a mission to kick us out as soon as possible) but I just needed a couple of days to get my act together.


We departed on Monday and went via Rockford to avoid the Chicago traffic. Unfortunately, this added a couple of hours to our trip making it a very, very long first day. We arrived at the Holiday Inn in Forrest City, Arkansas around 10 p.m. We were SO tired. We piled out and got to our room and waited while the hotel employee set up the two cribs. We engaged the air conditioning before bed which seemed to have two settings - 'artic blast' or 'hell on earth'. We chose artic blast which at some point during the evening brought the room temperature down to around 32 degrees and I was certain that snow would be falling at any minute.


I can now tell you with absolute certainty that there are reasons why they have occupancy limits. We had a full size bed for each of the adults. We had a crib for Mia against a wall that would get hit when you opened the door. We had a crib in front of other other bed that you'd need to shimmy around when going to the bathroom. The cribs had been 'broken in' and Sasha quickly discovered that if he rocked hard and fast he could make a whining noise with his bed that he thought was very funny. At about midnight I, on the other hand, did not find this noise all that amusing. At 1:30 a.m. after about 30 minutes of sleep, Mia awoke. At 2:30 a.m. after another 30 minutes of sleep, Sasha awoke. This was followed by Blake deciding that he would sleep better if he could burrow into me causing my body temperature to reach about 200 degrees (good thing that the artic blast setting had been selected). I tried moving him several times to no avail (Blake weighs about 70 pounds and can be quite stubborn especially when he's comfy). At 5 a.m. a tourist bus full of seniors chatting loudly and cackling about going to breakfast finally put an end to our 'sleep'.


We got on the road at 9:30 a.m. after having a hardy, free breakfast where Mia worked the room. I'm surprised she can actually eat anything when we're out in public. She spends the entire time scanning for people to wave at and engage. And, of course, everyone eats her up. She is a very cute little girl.


We arrived in Cat Spring amidst a horrible thunderstorm. We actually prayed the last two hours of the trip that we'd make it home without incident. It was pretty scary. Folks that haven't spent any time in Texas probably don't realize how different the rain is here. Unlike Illinois, where we have mostly gentle rains, Texas rains are the bottom dropping out of the bucket / roads are flooded / sonic boom style thunder type of rain. It can be magnificent but it's not what you want to drive in. We finally arrived at Baba's house at 10:30 p.m. As I unpacked the necessities, I reveled in how we actually got my car into the carport. Apparently, with our new rooftop carrier, we had 'scraped' into our spot but hadn't heard the scraping with all the rain. Fortunately, we weren't wedged in and my car won't be forced to stay in the carport for life.

This is Mia's first big road trip and so begins our adventure in Texas.