Christmas Break 2011: Part One

The other night I sat down to write a blog post about our Christmas vacation. I made it about three paragraphs in when I hit major writer's block. Seriously. I mean, how do you sum-up three weeks worth of parties, vacations, 12-hour drives, and Christmas? I decided that I can't. At least not without it being extremely long and boring. So I am breaking up the highlights of our Christmas break 2011 and giving it to you in parts, little by little, for the next week or so. I feel better already.

Part One: The Drive

 Our girls are really fabulous travelers, or we would never attempt to drive over 700 miles and spend over 12 hours in the car twice in three weeks. That much time and distance in a car is kind of mind-boggling. But the time passed quickly as the girls were content to sing Christmas Carols, play I Spy, and watch an occasional movie while we drove through 3 states to get home for Christmas.

Luckily we had great roads for the drive. Montana and Idaho have no snow! It was a little crazy and a little depressing, but really great for travel.

Unfortunately we discovered during our drive that little Leah gets carsick. That's right folks. She became sick after every curvy mountain pass we drove over (minus one when she was sleeping). I think her grand total came to 4. Poor, poor baby girl.

Because she gave us little to no warning that she was sick we didn't have time to pull over to help her, or even grab a bag, so each episode resulted in an awful, smelly mess. I peeled off one of her little t-shirts and left it by side of the road somewhere in Montana. I just couldn't bring myself to keep it. Let it be known and recorded that cleaning puke out of a carseat using only baby wipes is the worst experience EVER.

Let it also be known that I love that baby girl and my heart broke for her each time she became sick.

About an hour outside of Rexburg, Lainy decided she needed to throw-up too. And all I could do was laugh. I know that is horrible. Brad thought I had lost my mind (or my heart). But sometimes it's better to laugh when you really feel like screaming and pulling your hair out at the thought of cleaning up yet another gross car seat and sick girl

Needless to say we were thrilled to get to Rexburg, not only to be welcomed by our wonderful and anxious family members, but to take nice, hot showers and wash the drive down the drain.

Driving portion of the trip done! Enter part two: party time.