766 and 911

On Saturday, I drove for 12 hours, 766 miles, through four states, with three kids, one cat, and no other adult as backup...just me, myself, and I.

You see, we planned to meet up with Seth come Labor day, but after being apart for about a month we just couldn't wait any longer so I packed up the troops, aka my offspring, and got to gettin'. Our crew is accustom to being on the move, bless their little hearts (man, I've been in the south too long saying things like bless their heart) we travel often so it wasn't a big deal when I announced we'd be hitting the road that weekend. What they aren't accustom to is the length of said road trip. They've done seven and eight hour road trips all the time, but 13 hours?! We've only done that one other time (last summer) so I was a wee bit nervous on how this was all gonna go down.

First off, let me say that Owen has flown more than he's ridden. And by that I mean he's used to getting on a plane for a couple of hours and being on the other side of the country. He's six. And right around the time he was born I became annoyed with driving all the time so we started flying to our destinations. I had this rule that if it was over 500 miles we were taking a plane, and we did. A lot. A so he got used to that. The older two, however, were used to long road trips since that's how we traveled for as long as they could remember. Because of this I made sure to bring loads of entertainment (especially for Owen) for our drive on Saturday.

First, I let them pick out movies.

Yeah, they went a little overboard but whatevs. You also can't forget books.

And I must say, my little dude did well. They all did well, but I was especially pleased with Owen's behavior because since he hasn't been on as many road trips I wasn't sure how he was gonna do. But within 10 minutes of being on the road I turned around and saw this:

Tres sweet. And then 10 minutes after that I saw this:

Tres, tres sweet. Ariana stayed up a bit watching Flushed Away and then soon she, too, was knocked out. And I'm not sure if you noticed but Jersey was napping with Owen. He was with O for 90% of the trip. Not sure why. Typically he favors Ariana but for some reason he was snuggled with my little guy the majority of the trip.

Though he did take the time to do some ninja kitty acrobatics:

Now I know you're wondering, If you bring a dog on a road trip you have to stop constantly at rest stops for potty breaks, but what do you do with a cat, it's not like it'll potty outside? To that I answer with a photo:

And three words: Litter box, duh!

Jersey was a bit nervous at first. Anytime he leaves our house he's nervous. He's an indoor cat and the furthest he'll venture is the front porch and our screened-in balcony. I think he eventually realized what was going on but he still clung to baby Owen's side.

It rained on our way there, like, torrential downpour rain, but luckily that only lasted 10 minutes or so. We planned to leave at five or six in the morning, but we had an unexpected situation arise, aka a ride in an ambulance, xrays, bloodwork, meds for an infection, and four hours in the ER type of situation.

Long story short Ariana had stepped on one of those tack bar things that are under the carpet between doorways earlier in the week, well, the wound looked as if it was healing fine but when she woke up crying and saying her entire leg was weak, twitching, numb, and when I picked her up to move her she screamed bloody murder I.Freaked.Out. I had no clue what it could be. I didn't even think about the injury on her foot so I didn't put two and two together that she could have an infection. I just knew that she said her lower back and leg were numb and when I moved her she was in pain. So I wasn't moving her. After phoning the hospital they sent the ambulance our way to be on the safe side.

Scary shit.

After a few hours in the ER we had our answer as to why she was in such pain, they gave her some meds, and she started to feel a bit better, so much so that she even did a silly face for a photo to Daddy.

After her discharge we went home to regroup. Then on our way out of town we had to pass the hospital we had just spent the morning in and Ari said, "Ugh, I never wanna see that place again!"

And I'd have to agree. Although the reason for never wanting to see it again had nothing to do with the staff because they were all so sweet. Seriously, every single staff member from the volunteers that watched the boys for me, to the nurse, the doctor, everyone. They were all so sweet and caring, I've never been to a hospital were every interaction I had was a pleasant one. So there's my ya'll are awesome, keep it up shout-out to Sacred Heart Hospital in Sandestin, Florida.

And let me just say this, I had been telling Seth that I had a bad feeling about the road trip the days leading up to it. So much so that I even considered not going because it was that strong of a feeling. But as soon as we were released from the hospital and got on the road, that feeling instantly went away. So maybe it was the Ariana situation that I was feeling. I'm typically not one to read in to feelings like that, but I've never had such a strong feeling about something before, it was one that I just couldn't ignore.

All in all it was an interesting day. It started out scary and ended well, in North Carolina, with Daddy, just the way we like it.