I am my father's daughter...

I find myself saying this more and more these days, actually both ways; I think I am an excellent conglomeration of both my parents. But I think my dad in my comes out in more extreme ways. Case in point: ridiculous road trips at crazy hours and times. We shall call this "The Great Road Trip, Part 1: Fellowship of the Wedding Rings."

Before we moved to Toledo, Mike's sister Karen (see below) got engaged, set her date, so we started planning the trip. Shortly thereafter I was approached by another gal, friend of a sister-in-law of a friend (did both of their weddings the past two years consecutively, and if you can follow that, you need more help than I do :) who wanted me to do flowers for her wedding this Saturday after Karen's wedding. Being me, and all that that entails, I figured, sure, I'll be in town, why not just extend our trip.

Then we moved, then we traveled all summer, then the countdown began, and I started the process of organizing, listing, and packing for me, my 1-year-old son, and for my flowershop-on-wheels-traveling-across-5-states. I have a miniature 3-subject notebook committed to this trip. The first section for Karen's wedding, the second for Melissa's, the third for what we will need as a family. Oh, and I thought it would be a great idea to plan a little get-together with a bunch of our MN friends to join us for a couple of pints at a couple of pubs downtown the night Mike flew in, so I had him pack all his stuff early too so he could just take the train down and join me.

Okay, so got all my lists organized, started packing, checking things off, finding what I needed out of the boxes of flower supplies, checked my email to realize I had not thought to ask off for that Monday night that Milo and I were supposed to leave. No big deal, I'm not usually scheduled passed 9. But of course this would be the one night that I would be scheduled until 10:30, and not get out of there until almost 11. I had the car all packed, got a great deal on a hotel room west of Chicago to break up the trip for Milo and me. I drove the wagon to work that night, and Mike put Milo to bed, then got him into the car a few hours later, met me at work so I could hit the road from there.

Fortunately, my angelic son fell back asleep before I even hit the highway, I popped in a book-on-CD, and we made tracks. Got to Chi-town by about 2:30am central time, found our fantastic little hotel (ask me about it sometime, I'm sold on this place), checked in, Milo made friends with the front desk guy, made it up to our room where there was supposed to be a crib, there wasn't, but instead I found Lake Minnetonka reincarnate on our floor. I called my new friend at the front desk, he shuffled around for a minute or two, offered to come get my non-existant crib, apologized profusely when I told him it wasn't there, and got me into another room in less than 5 minutes. King-sized bed, so I figured Milo and I could share. Set up a little cove with pillow walls so he couldn't roll out, and we settled in. Oh yeah, forgot to tell you, the little guy had been sick, to the doctor a couple of times with inconclusive symptoms, just enough to give him a good fever and make him pretty uncomfortable. So we got about 4 hours of highly disturbed sleep. Got up, grabbed breakfast at a fantastic greasy spoon down the way, and we hit the road again.

Milo fell asleep almost immediately again, and probably slept another 2-3 hours. Great for him, and really, great for me as the driver, but after not getting hardly any sleep the night before, I was highly envious. We drove, and when he woke, we chatted. He knows lots of animal sounds now, and right when he was starting to get cranky, and I didn't really have anything to offer him, out fell "Milo what does you monkey say? (lime-green stuffed monkey from Grammie)" Milo pauses, waiting... "Hi-yah!" Laughter erupts from the backseat. Repeat. Never seemed to get old, who knows why I thought of that, and even more, why he thought that was funny, but it worked. Got us to a rest area, used the facilities, which by the way, how do any of you women use the bathroom and control a non-walking/standing toddler-type? Just something to get you thinking... I found a careful balancing act worked quite effectively. Set out a blanket and we had a picnic under growing dark clouds. Milo scooted around, ate some fruit and yogurt and crackers, pretty good for a sickly kid, and we were off once more.

We did finally arrive at our destination, and I would say the trip here to MN was a great success. And I've only continued to push the envelope of my child's patience in the car through the past week, but that's for another time, and another section of the saga... "The Great Road Trip, part 2: From the Twin Cities to the Twin Ports..."