Road Trip!

 

Happy Monday Y'all.  We are preparing for an upcoming 2.5 week long road trip to southern and central california, which will start this upcoming sunday.  That's an ambitious first trip, so this past friday we decided to do a test run, with an overnight trip to Tucson on Saturday/Sunday.  On short notice we called up our friends Dara & Knut, who offered to host a barbecue for us, and Greg & Ilene, who offered to put us all up for the night, and packing was begun.  I didn't get enough sleep on friday night as I tried to get some lingering work done (paying off old bills, sorting through insurance claims, that sort of thing),  but we did manage to get everything packed up pretty much on time, got the kids fed at 1pm, and got onto the road at 2:06, almost making my 2pm goal departure.   Then as we were driving down, I remembered that Dara & Knut live about 30 minutes further than Greg & Ilene, so that rather than arriving just before the next meal time, we would be ~20 minutes late.  True to expectations halfway across tucson, and 20 minutes away from our destination, the loud screaming kicked in from the back seat.  A meal was needed.  Now.  Really, NOW.  So we pulled over on the side of the road, got the bottle out of the cooler, and gave the kids a snack to tide them over.  Lesson learned: make sure you have a good place to stop just before the next expected feeding time, not ten minutes later.  

The barbecue at D&K's was great, with lots of old friends who used to live in Chile, but now live in Tucson, in attendance.  We had delicious food, showed off our deliciously cute children, and only had to unpack half the car to get all the baby feeding & diapering accoutrement into the house.  Around 9:30, just before the 10pm feed, we repacked the car, drove over to Greg & Ilene's, and started prepping for the next meal (I used to think my old life & travel was all about food, but I had no idea...).

And then we realized that we left half the feeding stuff at Dara & Knut's, half an hour (each way) away.  No way we were going back saturday night, so we made do with what we had for the evening.  Lesson learned number two:  double and triple check the packing any time we leave from one place headed to another.   I was exhausted by midnight, and was up to help jaime with the 1am feeding, which we both did in a daze.  At 4am, the daze was even deeper, but luckily the kids didn't fuss much as they ate.  By 7am, I was mostly sleep recovered, and actually woke up a couple minutes before the kids, or the alarm.  I went to grab the car seats to try out the simultaneous feed ability of those (at home we use their boppy bouncy chairs, but I don't want to schlep them to Cali).  It worked out well, and jaime was able to sleep while I fed them.  Back to sleep at 7:30  until 9am, and then started to pack everything up again.  Dara found the stuff we had left at our house and was kind enough to drive half way into town, meeting us in the middle, so that we had a hope of making it back to phoenix in time for the next feed.  Always fitting things in before the next feed, or at least trying to.  We had some serious rain squalls during the ride home, but made it home within five minutes of baby hunger explosions, and our first road trip was completed.  Quite successful I think, and now we have fewer trepidations about the upcoming mega-trip.  California, here we come!

Oh, the picture.  This trip was the first time for most of our Tucson friends to meet Ella & Sam, and they were passed around and cuddled by many a person.  The picture above is Tyra, almost five years old and to whom I am the godfather, holding little Ella in her lap.  Check out Tyra's cool blue fingernails.