Southern Vacation, Part I

Well, my goodness, it has been a long time, hasn't it? Sorry 'bout that. But I have good reason for being delinquent in my blog entries: we were on vacation.

Did my brother and sister-in-law, at whose house we were staying, have internet access? Yeah. Could I have updated the blog while we were away? I suppose so. But I didn't. The side effect is that I have fodder for several posts which I will space out over the next couple of days so you don't have to commit two hours of your time to reading the narrative of our vacation. So here we go: installment 1.

Our kids are not strangers to road trips; they make the 4-hour trip to my parents' house with ease, and on a fairly regular basis. They are 4-hour-road-trip PROS. This trip, though, was a lot longer than 4 hours. It shaped up to be more like 14. Yikes. Understandably, I think, we were hesitant to make the trip during the daytime, anticipating that such a move would lengthen the already dauntingly-lengthed trip unnecessarily due to the inclusion of frequent stops for breaks. So we opted to make the drive at night, during the kids' sleeping hours. Easy peasy lemon squeezie.

The night before, I stayed up freakishly late (4:30 am) in an attempt to adjust my sleep schedule. I sent the kids to Yia-Yia's house the next day, hoping to get several hours of sleep to prime me for driving the first nighttime shift. The plan was that I'd start driving, Abe would sleep, then when I got tired, Abe would wake and take the wheel, and I would sleep. The plan was also that the kids would sleep for the duration of the whole trip.

Are we fools, or what?

Because there was so much to do in preparation for our trip, I worked all day, napping only for 1 hour--1 HOUR--before the big show got underway. I was even more exhausted than I would have been if I hadn't made the elaborate sleep-adjustment plan, so Abe started driving. The kids didn't fall right to sleep as we'd hoped; they stayed up until 11 pm. Thank goodness for the portable DVD player we borrowed. I tried (in vain) to sleep while Abe started driving, and when he finally tired at 1 am and asked me to drive, I had no choice. So, even though I had only slept 5 hours in the last 36, I got behind the wheel and drove the 1-5 am shift. It actually wasn't that bad; I was amazed.

At 5 am, we stopped to switch. I was getting tired, but there was a good chance we'd all stay awake--especially since the kids were up--for good. Yep. Great night's sleep, kids! 11 pm-5 am--just like normal! Or . . . not.

We stopped at a Cracker Barrel for breakfast, taking our sweet time before we strapped back in to the Camry, and then pressed on to our destination.

All things considered, the drive down really wasn't that bad. We were a bit tired, yes, but that afternoon, we all took naps and felt somewhat recovered. Then began the whirlwind events of the week...

to be continued......