Saturday, March 8, 2014

Disney: The Pre-Days

Since I took a job recently, planning for this trip did not happen.  Add that onto taking a day off the trip at the front to make sure I only missed one day of work, and that makes for well... we're here.



We left town only thirty minutes behind schedule Friday morning.  Not bad if you know me and trips.  I was worried about bored kids a little, and I was concerned about the long-haul trip as far as driving went, but the funny thing is that I wasn't bent out of shape about anything.  It was just time to go, and we did the best we could to pack and we went. 



Plenty of snacks, drinks, and these neat little bags of cheap toy, sticker, coloring, etc. treats that I'd made for each kid helped along the way.  So did the I-devices.  Mostly.



I thought that I'd let Ryan play iPad for a while, then make the rule at home stick... and he'd only have iPad a while, then watch movies with us all on the road.

After a meltdown of epic proportions that ended in me pulling over and leaving a lasting yet not so good impression on a small town outside Lafayette, I realized I might be in over my head.

No, I panicked.

But after a while on the road, he settled and we were fine.  We pulled in to another small town in Mississippi at a decent hour, ate dinner, and hit the sack in the hotel by nine.  Then we woke for another early departure, this time with another plan.  I'll just trade out the iPad with the iPod, and explain that it needs to charge.

Huh.  Yeah.  No.

So following around 18-20 hours of driving, sitting in traffic, listening to movies, and making fun of road signs (my personal trip favorite) we made it.  I'm sitting here in a hotel, with what seems like Mardi Gras going on outside my window, waiting for Eric to get here on the bus with the band kids and the rest of the staff.  Oh, and we don't want to talk about how much iPad Ryan had.  Just don't ask.

I'm taking my kids to Disney tomorrow, y'all. 



Here's a little secret... I almost blew it.  I almost decided I couldn't take it and turned around and went home.  It wasn't an idle threat.  I really couldn't take any more screaming and hitting, especially when part of the hitting was on the van window.  After that parking lot in Louisiana, I had to decide to either loosen my standards or lose this opportunity.

With the echoes of our home-trainer in my head, I let go and decided we would do our best.  We can't stop doing everything because it might go badly.  Yes, it might go badly.  And yes, there will probably be parts that will go badly.  Some things have already gone badly.  I've had the credit card I use stolen and used one place before we shut it off (yay for Discover!), they lost our reservation at the rental car place *coughthanksHERTZ* so we brought our ol' Minnie, and there have been meltdowns.  But I have to work on not letting one bad hour or two here and there ruin what could be an amazing time.

So here I sit, having lost two hours of sleep even before I go to bed (time zone, time change), having driven hard for two days, getting ready to crash before we go to the Mouse House tomorrow.  I'm nervous.  We have social storied... because my husband ROCKS... and we have talked through the trip, what to expect, and we've done what we can do... now it's time to do it.

Thanks be to God!  
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