Road Trip

I was on the road for over 6 hours Saturday as we took off on our Beach vacation. The kids and Ginger were already in Richmond, so they only had to be in the car for just under 4 of those hours. The traffic south on 95 was atrocious. Traffic would just slow to a crawl for miles for no apparent reason. The traffic didn't bother me as much as it usually would have. Normally if I slow down for that long I think there better be some good reason for it. An airplane landing on the interstate. Tractor trailer turned over. Something. Slow downs just because you go over a hill and see a lot of traffic and suddenly every one is breaking (which causes the slinky braking effect behind you) is just annoying. But like I said, it didn't bother me all that much, perhaps because I was all mellow listening to Diane Krall on CD as I drove.

Being able to listen to my music only lasted until I got to Richmond. Then we had to listen to Ginger's iPod with all the kid's music on it as it randomly shuffled from song to song. Interesting tidbit: They Might Be Giants now does children's music. That disc was at least entertaining. There was a brief time when I thought the iPod must have a bug in it, because it started playing a song from the David Gray CD. When I asked how that happened, Ginger informed me that particular CD is grouped in with the children's music because it's one of Quinn's favorites (he obviously has better musical taste than I did when I was his age).

So all in all the trip wasn't too bad. Neither kid napped any on the trip. And the only downside to both kids being potty trained now is you'll be driving along and one of them will yell out "I have to pee!". At that point you best hope you're not in traffic because you have a limited amount of time to be able to make a stop and find a restroom. And it's not like the other child will use the restroom at that point. Nooooo. They'll wait till you're back on the road for half an hour and then they'll decide they have to go.

We ended up getting to the beach house around 8. After that we took a quick trip to the grocery store to get some essentials for the next morning and get dinner for that night. I made the mistake of getting some take out Chinese Food. In retrospect getting Chinese Food at the beach probably wasn't the best idea. It was the worst Chicken Fried rice I've ever had. It had chicken, rice and onions, and that was it. No scrambled egg, no carrots, nothing else.

After we got home and ate dinner, we put the kids to bed. They didn't actually get settled in and asleep until around 10:30, so it was a really long day for them.