Holiday Travel Part Two

We just put up a live Christmas tree in our house for the first time.  It was late and the girls needed to get to bed so I threw one strand of lights at it because I truly believe that an unlit Christmas tree is one of the saddest things I have ever seen.
But that's not what this post is about.  This post is about the second half of  our journey home.  The above picture is the only one from the second half.  The second half started when the dog got sick in the car after one to many Cheese-its (thanks for those Dad).
After that, we stopped for lunch at a busy restaurant.  Have you ever been to a busy restaurant with kids?  Kev and I tell folks that the reason we go out to eat occasionally is to remind ourselves why we don't go out to eat anymore.  It's starts when you order, and you know that you could do the smart thing and order one meal for both children, but you wonder how the children will react to this, and then you start to feel the pressure of the line forming behind you and you know that you have to make a decision asap.  Before you know it, your bill for lunch is over $30.
When we got our food, Maggie took two bites of her meal and told us she was done. Sigh.  She was so wiggly in her chair that if it hadn't been for the quick thinking of my left hand she would have ended up on her head.  Libby was eating and aggressively rocking her brother in his baby seat, until he started to cry.  Of course he started crying, because just in case not everyone in the restaurant was staring at us yet (after the chair tipping), we did what we could to get the whole audience.  Kevin leaned over and picked the poor little dear up, to which Libby exclaimed, at the top of her lungs, "Oh no, look!"  Oh no look, what?  The car is on fire, someone is bleeding, surely something drastic had happened to make such a declaration.  No, it was just the evidence that Cooper's diaper had leaked a bit.  This triggered both girls to declare their need for the restroom.  Kev took the baby to the car and I went to the restroom with the girls.  We took the only open stall.
Let me just pause and say that taking small children to a public restroom is a dirty business even under the best circumstances. They touch everything.  If you  are an incredibly organized, neat freak Mommy, who may be reading this post, don't fool yourself into thinking that your kid doesn't touch things in a public restroom. You are sadly mistaken. They do, they all do.  No matter how many layers of toilet tissue you feather their nest with, they still manage to touch the seat.  How? I don't know.  Surely I told them "don't touch anything" enough times.  Apparently not.
Back to my story, Libby went first.  She sat down and in the same voice she used in the restaurant, she announced what she needed to do in the potty.  Perfect, now we all know. Did I mention that a line started forming outside of our stall?  Maggie's turn.  She too announced her plans for the potty, but adds the line "don't look at me!"  Joy.  Now there is at least five woman waiting in line for the potty.  Maggie was not concerned with line and sat there patiently waiting for things to happen for her.  After the third time I asked her if she was finished, she told me not to look at her so vigorously that she fell off the potty.
Before she was done.
In the public restroom.
While there was a line outside of our door.
Eww.
I was starting to sweat an unnatural amount.  Libby dropped a toy on the floor (of the public restroom, eww) about 25 times.  On the 26th time I told her to "HOLD HER BODY STILL"  in my most loving,  gritted, growling teeth Mommy voice.  You know the one, right?  Ten minutes later (not exaggerating) we finally left the stall.
I presumed we would get to the car to find Kev and Cooper all ready to go.  Instead, we found Kev pacing outside the car holding Cooper, who's lower half was covered by a loose clean diaper over the dirty one.  His little legs were just dangling there in the cold .  The dirty one had leaked not only  on his clothes, but all over his car seat as well.  Kevin had no means of changing him bc I had the diaper bag with me.  It was fun.  I ended up changing him in my lap.  Have you ever changed a dirty diaper in you lap?  That was fun too.
I just laughed and told Kev that we couldn't have made that up if we tried.
Holiday travelling at its finest.
Are we there yet?  (Yes, we heard this the entire way home).  No, for the love of all that is good and right in the world, we are not there yet!
I'll clean things up for tomorrow's post and try to make it shiny, like the one strand of lights on our tree.
Here's a couple of pictures from our time at Babs and Grandad's house before we started our journey home to compensate for the dirtiness of this post.

Babs taught the girls to make apple dumplings

Grandad is on Libby's "Nice List" because he got her Disney princess sheets to use at his house.  They are pretty much the best thing that has ever happened her.  

Grace and Peace