Our second-to-last driving day... or would it be our last??!! Jim and I could not decide whether we should maybe just forgo our stop in Buffalo and instead just drive straight through the night, arriving home by 3 or 4 a.m. I've done the through-the-night drives several times before en route to or from Notre Dame. While efficient with respect to a lack of traffic and making the most of the hours in a day, I generally need a couple of days to get out of the fog. With two kids in tow, all bets are off. Will they stay asleep the whole time? (unlikely), will they fall back to sleep upon arriving home? (questionable), will they nap for hours on end so that we can recover from the all-night drive? (Ha!!!) There was also the issue of cousin time. Since we'd spent the previous night and first half of the day apart from the Framingham Gang, Danny was getting absolutely desperate in his desire to be with his cousins. Most specifically, Emily. I don't know how or why it happened, but Danny wants nothing more than to be with Emily every moment he can. All of Danny's older cousins have been so wonderful with him on this trip. We've been lucky to rotate them into our car every day, each getting his or her turn (except for poor Greg, due to car seat laws and Danny's refusal to switch cars with Greg due to his seat being "too bumpy." Seriously, Danny?) The girls have entertained Danny with Molly's invention of "the ball game" (which may or may not occasionally involve bouncing the lightweight ball off of Mary's head) while helping settle Mary to sleep or feeding her Cheerios to keep her happy. They've endured episodes of Tom & Jerry cartoons, Sesame Street DVDs and repeated viewings of the movie Cars. In exchange they receive our heartfelt gratitude, as many Nilla Wafers as they want, and an occasional handful of M&M's. Sometimes their ride is peaceful. Other times, Mary decides to stretch her vocal cords for all the highway to hear. They never complain (at least not to us!) and Sam and Molly deal with Danny's Emily obsession with aplomb. (Emily also deals with Danny's Emily obsession extremely well, never once telling him to leave her the heck alone! It really is quite sweet.)
Anyway, we finally met up with our other halves by someplace north of Columbus, Ohio, and even though it was Sam's turn to ride in our car, she very graciously let Emily leapfrog her at Danny's less-than-gracious insistence that he only wanted Emily to ride with him.
After a farewell dinner at Texas Roadhouse in Erie (this crew is a fan of hot rolls with cinnamon butter!), Liam joined us for the final 90 minute ride to Buffalo, where we would again spend the night with the generous Schenkler Family. By this point we finally settled on sleeping before hitting the road in the morning, but we resolved to be on the road by 7, even though Billy and Jen would stay in Buffalo for a few more hours. The night and road trip were capped by a bonfire at the Schenklers, complete with s'mores and beer (at least for the adults.) Danny tried to stay upstairs where his cousins were sleeping but after 45 minutes decided he'd sleep better downstairs with us. Another 11:30 p.m. bedtime in the books!
No comments:
Post a Comment