It is Going To Be A Long Trip

Monday I will return to talking about Becoming Friend Worthy BUT for the weekend I interrupt the New Town to Hometown series with a silly story from the journey

(Links in this post are affiliate links. I will be compensated when you make a purchase by clicking those links. See my disclosure page for more information)

Moving day! The day the moving van rolls up to your door and movers packs up everything leaving you to vacuum up the house, shine the sinks and hand the landlord the key.

Yeah our moving day looked nothing like that. My husband found out the moving company was going to eat up our entire sign on bonus and more so he came up with a crazy plan. He bought a 1970’s cube van, about the size of a U-haul rental and then remade an old trailer of his dad’s into an inclosed pull behind U-haul of sorts and attached that to the back. This left me driving the family van packed with 3 kids ages newborn, 2 and 6 and all the clothing and supplies we would need for the trip.

To keep the kids entertained in the days before portable DVD players he bought a small TV/ VCR combo and a power converter and rigged the thing to fit between the front seats of the van. Veggie tales and Rescue Hero’s is what I heard for the ~~multi-day~~ multi-week trip.

Yes we were a proud redneck moving convoy complete with blue walkie-talkies to keep track of each other because we only had one pay as you go cell phone between the two of us. Oh and don’t forget the dinosaur GPS system, a paper road atlas.

We left early one morning on the beginning of a hot July summer’s day . Kissed and hugged my husband’s family and then set off with the goal of putting the Rocky Mountains behind us by dinner time.

BOY WERE WE WRONG!

Not even 2 hours into the trip the starter on the cub van stopped working. While my husband worked to fix the starter, I drove ahead to a local park I had spied. My thought was the 2 older children could burn off energy while we waited, but the park had no shade and the kids were boiling hot in the summer heat.

In a panicked reaction to stop the whining of three small children I did something I thought was brilliant but when it was done I realized I might have created a problem.

I knew of a small road side lake, where we could all cool off while we waited. I didn’t remember the way back to where we had left my husband and it was out of walkie-talkie reach so I just took off. Yep not smart but I had a plan. I figured if I shouted “hey Jack can you hear me now!” into the walkie-talkie every few minutes eventually my hubby would hear me. Thankfully my shaky plan worked and over an hour later a panicked husband responded “yes and where are you?”.

Wish I could say that first day got better but it didn’t we traveled perhaps another hour or two when a tire on the cube van blew. My hubby put on the spare while I nursed the baby and passed out snacks to the older children.

About an hour or so later we stopped for gas and I picked up my fuzzing daughter only to discovered what seasoned parents call a “power poop”. Baby poop everywhere, she was covered ,her clothes were soaked through, her seat was covered and some had even oozed out onto my van’s cloth covered seats. It took us half an hour to clean up the mess it was so bad.

“That is it” I said as I put an now much happier baby back in her now slightly damp and sort of clean car seat ” I am not going another mile today!” “but we have just 2 more hours to my aunt’s” my husband replied. I looked my hubby straight in the eyes with that are you crazy look and said “At our current rate of travel that 2 hours is going to be 6 and I don’t have 6 more hours of THIS in me”. Needless to say my very smart husband decided to spring for a hotel room and tell his aunt we would see her by lunch the next day.

Lesson Learned: When your husband buys a moving van that is as old as you are and you follow him in the family van with a child still receiving nourishment 100% from you own body, fully expect to travel at a snail’s pace, that way you won’t be frustrated when you actually do. Oh that and if you have cloth covered seats and young children, buy seat covers.

This post is part of the New Town to Hometown series. Use the links below to dig into the series.

Introduction: My Story

Part One: Becoming Friend Worthy