Where to start??? Let's see, the highlights of the trip so far in chronological order.
1. Jayden running a fever on Monday of 104.9.
2. Waking up at 11:30 Monday night and my body told me it was at least 4 or 5 in the morning. It was then I realized I was facing a very long night.
3. Tues. we had lunch with Jayden's birth mother. Had a lovely visit.
4. On the way to Great Grandpa Zooks the luggage carrier on the roof of the van came loose and went bouncing down the road into the ditch. We stopped and put the whole thing into the van. This made for a very crowded van. I am sure I looked like a little old woman peering over the steering wheel. My seat was so far forward. I was very uncomfortable, UGH....
5. I have fought sleep many times while driving and have usually resorted to smacking myself in the face to wake myself back up. I am sure there are plenty of people who would like take on this job. Well, I fell asleep and ran out of the road. The van was completely off of the road. This woke me up rather quickly and I eased back onto the road. I told Rachel I was just taking a very short detour.....
6. Arrived at the great grandpa's place.
7. Slept very good last night.
8. Jayden has not had a fever since Monday.
9. Today we are heading to Fort Myers to see Aleya's Grandma Dorothy.
10. Then we are going down to Naples to see the lady who has helped us with all three of our adopted children.
In closing I am slowly realizing that adopting can be alot of fun. I hope these little bits of time spent with blood relatives will be of value to our children in later years. I also hope/pray that these times will help the blood relatives know they made the correct choice......
God Bless
2 comments:
How do you do taveling with all the young children? We are facing that question in a new way since we will now have to have five car seats when we come to Virgina next due to their crazy rule about needing to be in a car seat till 7!??!!!
We try to travel EARLY in the morning, starting at like, 3-4 am and going from there. However that makes for very grumpy children and we're not sure what to do now that we have maxed out the size on our van.
I would just enjoy hearing how you do the long hauls. (We have 23 hours of driving time to get there! :-)
Interesting question, Japheth, I thought pretty hard about it before we left for this trip because I knew we were going to have LOTS of time in the van.
I have always had 1 very important rule - have NO extra "stuff in the front where we will all be sitting. When we traveled over Christmas we were packed so full that we had luggage, presents, etc. all over the van under children's feet, between seats, everywhere! The trip was miserable.
SO this time we found a luggage carrier to put most of our luggage in. That worked for on the way there but as Glen mentions it blew off and we could not use it after that because it messed up where we had it tied onto the van. So the rest of teh trip we had more luggage up with us than I like, but it really wasn't to bad.
Another thing we do is to put the seats and carseats where it makes it easiest for me to get around back there. I do ALOT of going from the front seat to the back seats.
This time we took out one of our middle seats, so we had a pretty nice open area in the back behind the front passenger seat. We had 3 children in the far back seat and one in the seat behind Glen. It was tight in the back with 3 car seats, but we squeezed everybody in. It worked VERY well. I could sit back there on the floor to entertain the children and to feed the boys etc.
Now since you had 5 children... you obviously won't be able to take a seat out... which will make it much more unhandy! And like Glen said I had a treasure chest. It was a lifesaver. I bought cheap things alot of them 1 or 2 dollars at the dollar stores. Different coloring things, books, sunglasses, little remote control cars, whatever I could find that was cheap and that I thought would entertain them.
If they got buggy I could tell them to look out the window cheerfully until a certain time and then I would find a new treasure for the.
Another HUGE lifesaver for us is each of out children have a blanket and teddy bear that they sleep with at home. Also sevearl of them have binkys and several suck their fingers. There was alot of times that I would snuggle the children down with their blankets or teddy bears and their binky or finger, and they would just sit there for an hour or more. Often I would put in a children's cd or tape. That really helps them, they listen and look out the window.
I don't know how much of this will help you, Japheth. I can't imagine having 5 young children and traveling for that amount of time.
Our longest traveling day was 10 hours or so. It got long but the children did really good.
We didn't so much have long traveling days after our 1st one it is just that every day we had 4 or more hours to drive, except about 2 of the days we stayed in one area.
I am NOT a night traveler. Glen would be more that way than me. If I get up that early I am tired and grouchy, and even though the children do sleep some when we get up that early they are still more tired and more grouchy when we do that.
For us it has worked best to get up and leave soon after the children normally wake up. that way we have all gotten a good night of sleep and we don't start our trip out tired and grumpy. :-)
Well this got VERY long, hopefully you can use some of it...
Rachel
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