Whirlwind Trip

This week we made a flying trip out to California for my brother-in-law's high school graduation.  Little Sidney is all grown up!  He's not so little anymore, of course (and I don't think he'd appreciate me calling him little anyway.)  The trip went about as well as trips ever do for us.  We are a very packed full van now, even with a trip that is only lasting 3 days.  The kids were crammed in and we started hearing "Are we there yet?" before we'd even made it an hour out.  And of course as soon as we crossed the Colorado River into California, my kids thought we were already at our destination.  Nope, sorry kids, a few more hours to go. . . .  Our trip was made longer by the perpetual bathroom breaks requested by at least one member of the family.  K is just barely potty-trained, and he absolutely refused to wear a pull-up.  But most of our stops went like this:  I extricate M, B and K from the car and march them off to the bathroom.  It takes forever (between M's fear of strange toilets and K's endless hand drying).  I deliver all the kids back to the car and buckle K back into his car seat while Terence takes J to the bathroom.  They return and we are finally loaded up and ready to go when K cries loudly from the backseat, "I need to go PEE-PEE!!"  He refuses to give up, so we finagle him out of the van again (K's seat is tucked in the far back corner) and I hurry him to the bathroom again, where he does in fact have to pee.

Good grief.

A trip that Mapquest says should take a little over six hours took us about eight.  Two extra hours worth of potty breaks.  Yeah.

Anyway, we made it in time to check in to our hotel and have a short breather before it was time for the graduation.  As of the night before, Sidney hadn't found enough tickets for everyone in the group, so I was planning to stay at the hotel with the younger kids.  But I lost the battle (Terence's mom was very insistent) and at the last minute they scraped up enough tickets for everyone.  M and B sat with their Grandma Harper and Terence and I stood along the track with J, K, & S.  (We did a lot of kid chasing and rotating which child we were holding.)  The graduation was short as far as graduations go-- only an hour-- but it was a LONG hour, let me tell you.  But we did get to see Sidney walk and cheer for him, which was the whole point.

Sidney holding S

Friday we visited with Terence's family for a little while and then headed to Buccaneer Beach in Oceanside to play with the McClure family in the sand and sea.  It was cold though (June beach weather is way different from Phoenix's blistering June temps.)  J and B braved the water anyway.  I waded out with them, but it was not really a good swimming beach.  We got battered with rocks every time a wave came in and there were sudden troughs that sent the kids from knee high water levels to chest level in an instant.  And that water was cold!!  S loved, loved, loved the sand though.  She was entertained the whole time by just digging her hand into it and trying to pick it up.  I wish I had gotten some pictures, but I was wet and sand covered and I didn't dare get my camera out.

Friday night and Saturday morning we stayed with our friends the McClures.  We always manage a visit with them when we go out to California and several times they have met up with us here in Arizona.  They have kids in the same general range as ours and the kids love to play together.

All ten kids-- in November the McClures will beat us out by having  #6 :-)

Late Saturday morning we reluctantly loaded up the kids and all our stuff and hit the road again.  It was hard to leave.  Arizona has been my home for many years now, but it still isn't home like San Diego is.

The trip home went without incident, though we had to make more potty stops at places that were not officially bathrooms.  Ah, the joy.  Oh well.  At least we had no accidents in the car.  When we got home though, we found out that we had been VERY lucky not to have had an unplanned pit stop (or worse) on the way home.  Just after I pulled the van into the garage, one of the tires decided to go flat.  Not mildly flat, but completely flat within a couple minutes while you could hear the air whistling out of the tire.  Terence pulled the tire off to see if we had run over a nail and discovered that the inside seam was splitting open.  Further inspection confirmed that the other front tire had the same problem.  Yikes!!  We were definitely blessed and protected to make it home safely, just as we had prayed at the beginning of the trip.

It is nice to be home though.  Now I just have to tackle the mounds of laundry. . . .