Once in a Lifetime

Bear with me. I'm exhausted. I think the last couple of months is finally catching up with me.

As I mentioned, we did return safely, and mostly sane, from Missouri. Which means that we also made it out there. Just barely. Ok, so we all know the idea was a crazy/terrible one from the start. 3 kids under 3, who are cousins, in the backseat of a Toyota Camry, driving 1500 miles across the country with my sister, whom I've struggled to get along with for pretty much my entire life. But, I figure my little brother would only get home from his 2 year mission to Russia once, and I don't have any other little brothers, and what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right? Well, maybe crazier.

The original plan was to leave around 4 in the afternoon, just enough time in the car to not get too grumpy, get out and stretch for dinner, then back in the car. The kids would only have a couple hours before they fell asleep and slept through the night. By then we would be one 6 or so hours from Branson. With a couple of long stops to play we would make it for a late dinner. Mom and Dad (or Grandma and Grandpa) would have the next day off, so they could watch the kids while we took a much needed nap. We even had a dual-screen DVD player.

Well, it didn't exactly go that way. I figured, worse case scenario, we'd have to stop and get a motel for the night and it would be around midnight when we got in on Friday. It got so much worse than that. Everything went as planned until we got in the car after dinner. We'd stopped in Little America, and let the kids run out their energy on the playground. We get back in the car, and things went pretty well, until bedtime. Apparently poor Eisley was teething. And Korban and Kennady couldn't fall asleep with a movie on, and Eisley wasn't happy with it off. So they all watched a movie until way too late, and then we turned it off. After 10-15 minutes of them all screaming simultaneously, they eventually drifted off to sleep one by one. By then it was around 1 in the morning. I was tired. So I tried to get some sleep to be the next driver. Eisley kept waking up every 30 minutes and crying/screaming. Some of it was in her sleep. Then Korban would wake up and cry. I'd get them both to go back to sleep, and then go back to sleep myself. Repeat every 20 minutes. Around 3 am, we realized we needed to get gas, and the low air pressure tire light had come on (who knew cars had those?). So we pulled over for gas and to put air in the tires. And all Hell broke loose. A three hysterically crying/screaming inconsolably. And Kendra was on her last nerve. So we decided to look for a motel for the night.

Apparently if you walk into a hotel in the middle of the night asking for a room and say you need a crib, they will try to charge you a ridiculous amount of money. So we tried several, until the lady at the Days Inn had some compassion. But they had no cribs. So we start getting the kids out of the car, and Eisley throws up everywhere. We get them, and all of out stuff in the hotel room. It's now 3:45. The kids are fully, delusionally, awake. And giggling. We are trying our best to drag stuff in from the car and keep them quiet. Kendra makes one more run out to the car, and when she returns says she was confronted in the hall by the lady next door, who was not happy. I assumed she apologized. We continue to get the kids ready for bed. They are being pretty quiet. We get a knock on the door, an old man with one of those little blindfold thingys on the top of his head. I open it a crack and he starts yelling at me. I try to calmly apologize and explain that we'll have the kids asleep in less than 10 minutes. He keeps yelling. Telling me how inconsiderate we are for bringing kids to a motel in the middle of the night. I apologize again, and explain we didn't really have any choice. He keeps yelling that we ruined his entire stay. (Um, we're at the Days Inn in the middle of Nebraska people, not the Ritz). Figuring he's just mad, and tired, and not going to be easy to reason with, I close the door politely in his face).

Kennady goes down easy. Kendra and I get ourselves ready for bed, and turn out the lights. Korban and Eisley are fussing a little, but halfway asleep. And then someone pounds on the wall. Not an "oops they must have knocked something off the nightstand" pound, but a very clear "we are mad and trying to get back at you" pound. Every 2 minutes, this happens again. This pounding is so loud that it is waking all the kids up, in fact, I know that it was waking the entire hotel up. So I head out to go talk to the night lady, and the door next door swings open. They are packing and leaving. Alright. The old man starts yelling at me. He's got two younger (35ish) women with him. I try to talk to them. They are a little more sympathetic. I explain we have 2 out of 3 kids asleep, and if they keep banging on the wall, they will all wake up, and so will the rest of the hotel, so please, please stop. Then Kendra, who thought this old man was a homicidal maniac, opens the door and starts yelling at the man who is yelling at me, and says she's calling the cops. They start yelling back and forth. Um, yeah. The night manager is out in the hall just watching everything happen. I go back to our room, try to calm Kendra down, and hope the cops don't really show up. As far as we know they didn't. Those people left. We slept 4 hours. Maybe less. Then we went to get breakfast. They had exactly one donut and one muffin left. I ask if they have anything else. The lady points to the coffee machine. Hhahahaha, my kids will love that.

Then back in the car for 10 more hours of driving. The kids were not happy and had not had enough sleep. Eisley refused to sleep in the car until 6 pm that night. Kendra hadn't had enough sleep and felt nauseous. Trying to feed three children at McDonald's meant we didn't really get to eat anything. AS it's 6 pm and we're only in Lincoln, NE, we figure out if we don't have to stop again, it's going to be 1 in the morning before we make it Branson, and we know we will definitely have to stop again. So we do what any full-grown women who happen to be sisters would do, we call Mom and Dad, and beg them to drive to Kansas City to be our relief drivers. Having heard the details of the night before, they agreed. We got to Kansas City, and they took us to IHOP and watched the kids so we could eat. Then we separated and sat in the passenger seats for the 3 hour drive back to Branson. Kennady and Korban fell asleep within 3 minutes and slept the whole way. Eisley only slept a little, but hardly fussed at all. We got in around 3:30 in the morning.

Luckily, that was the worst part of our trip. Well, there was one small fight between my sister and I, but the cops didn't actually get called that time. Dustin did get home from his mission. He mostly still speaks English. He didn't do a lot of talking while we were there. Perhaps he was overwhelmed by the craziness. Grandma and Grandpa loved having all of their kids and grandkids there at once. Their house got totally destroyed on a daily basis by two toddlers. Kendra and I fought a lot less than the last time we were living under one roof. We tried to do fun things. Doing fun things with 2 toddlers is hard. Mini golf wasn't quite the family outing we were expecting. We really didn't get enough sleep while we were there. Kennady and Korban never got to bed on time. Korban was pretty grumpy about it. We all got a nasty cold. We did manage to play a game of Monopoly without killing each other. And we got in an awesome game of bowling, because the Allphins watched Korban and Eisley. We played a lot of games. Dad, Kendra and Dusting went canoeing. I'm pretty sure they had fun. I needed a break. I did get a strawberry concrete from Andy's.

The trip home went remarkably better. We stopped two nights. Dad used his points to put us up in nice hotels with valet parking, indoor pools, and full cooked-to-order breakfasts. We also had two rooms each night. And the kids got to swim a little each night, which made them pretty happy. We still did a lot of driving. Eisley did have one extreme explosive diaper, with poop from head to toe, in the middle of Nebraska. Poor kid got her diaper changed and a diaper wipe bath on the side of the interstate. Korban was cranky and teething. Ben met us in Little America, so Kendra could drive straight home. The kids and I were SO happy to see him.

I can promise we won't be doing that again.