Hailey was getting baptized, so my mom, the kids and I headed out to spend a week in Colorado. Silly me — I didn’t know that Icka was going to be as naughty as can be the entire flight out, by kicking the seat in front of her, yelling at the top of her lungs, “out” a thousand times, and throwing anything she could get her hands on. When we made the flights, we didn’t know that our flight was going to be an hour longer due to weather conditions. We also didn’t know that the airport was going to be closed fifteen minutes after we landed because we were in a white out. We didn’t realize that renting a car from Thrifty was the worst idea. (Considering that we spent thirty minutes declining every single sort of up sale our stinking lady made. Also considering the weather being so bad and I had to go get the car in those conditions. I ended up sopping wet after I spent thirty minutes as the sole person putting all of our car seats, stroller, luggage and kids in the vehicle — with a frozen trunk. It was the worst customer service experience there ever has been. Nothing says “thrifty” like Thrifty.) Once we got on the road, the conditions were as bad as I have ever seen. As we were driving, Scout would say, “I want to see another crash”, because they were EVERYWHERE. We counted at least 50 crashes. Most of them into the center divider, but there was a 12 car pile up and a few other big ones. We were averaging 20 miles an hour in our front wheel drive piece of junk, and were just about to Nathans when our car started to slide. We ended up spinning out and stopped as we faced traffic. Everyone was far enough behind us to stop safely, so we were fine but totally stuck. Our wheels just spun, and we had the entire freeway stopped. I told Scout to say a prayer for us to get unstuck, and he said the sweetest little prayer. Just after he finished, we finally got a little traction, and 85-point turned it out. After the sketchy few minutes of being stuck, Scout said, “That was cool. Let’s do it again!” Our arrival time which was supposed to be 5:30, turned into 10:00. It was a total nightmare!
Notice Icka’s seat turned as far to the left as possible, so she couldn’t kick the seat as hard. Also notice that Icka is the one using the “paid for” seat, as Scout hangs out. The little female devil is the one who needs to be contained for everyone’s sanity.
Scout was a saint. Here he is trying to feed Navy at the Thrifty car rental while I was being tied up. He did finally lose it as Icka was screaming in the car for hours. He yelled out, “AAAAHHHHH – get me out of here!” Poor guy.
We spent half of the time at Nathan’s house, and the other half at Shem’s house. The two houses could not have been more different, but my kids were in heaven at both. Nathan’s house was NON STOP! Those are the loudest, most energetic boys I have ever been around. They don’t have television or anything electronic because of little Jonathon who could get seizures from them, so they play hard all day. Every morning when Scout would wake up, the first thing that would come out of his mouth was, “I want to go play!” Lucky for him — he was in the right house.
He was really into having a snowball fight. That was…until he got hit by one and realized it was pretty cold.
The residuals of the white out. Scout was in the snow all day long, and I want to publicly say that the best invention EVER is the UGG boot. His feet stayed warm, but WAY more importantly….they stayed dry!
The boys had to shovel the driveway. Scout was totally into the idea, until he saw what the shovels looked like. After he tried to use one, he said, “I want a shovel like the one I have at home.” His little beach shovel would have taken years to get through this snow, so we were glad that the cousins took over with the big ones.
Icka and Liam stayed warm inside. Liam is so mellow compared to Icka.
When we headed to Shem’s house, I couldn’t believe the difference. I felt like I was in a rest home. Everything is quiet and mellow. Scout kept saying, “I just wanna play!” the funny things was that they were all playing, but just not the same way that Nathans kids played.
The kids loved painting rocks. Landon was Scouts total buddy, and they had the best time.
Static boy loved the tramp with Landon. He even learned how to do a pseudo flip.
Icka loved being thrown in the air by uncle Shemmy.
These two had a little rivalry going on. I thought it was so cute, and here they are fighting over a toy. Ireland is a force, but Icka held her own.
According to my mom, this hour was,” the best part of the trip.” Rude…huh?!
On our way back, my mom convinced me to give Navy a trial run of “going to sleep” meds for our upcoming France flight. Benadryl and Dramamine were the front runners, so I chose the latter. I waited and waited, and there was no sleep to be had. The only difference was that she was a bit more mellow. But I put in a different car seat, and took her shoes off to help with the kicking and there was definite improvement.
She looks a little loopy. Her side swoop from ripping out her bow looks especially nice today. Kind of like a comb over.
We were able to get both kids in a seat, but we had to sit separately. My mom had Scout, the obviously easier child. But for some reason, she tuned out her babysitting duties completely, as Scout came back to visit about 6 times during the flight. My sleeping aisle sitter was nice every time he came back to chat with me who was in the middle and Icka who was at the window. When I finally stood up to see what the problem was, I saw my mom leaning against the wall while totally engrossed in a book. Really responsible mom. So I called the flight attendant, and she went and spoke to my mom to get her in trouble. As I watched from the back, I just saw them laughing and my mom make an “I don’t really care” gesture. But at least you have the proof above.
We are finally home! The trip was great. The traveling wasn’t.
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