Over the traffic, and through the puke, to the beach we go...

This was originally posted back in May '07. I think it states every parent's Grizwald vacation with young kids. I edited a few grammar issues.

Thanks to Parent Bloggers Network and Pick Packgo for hosting this week's vacation challenges with your kids.

My boys are pretty great travelers and have endured hours and hours of driving since they were teeny tiny babies. They have always been used to a good 5 hour drive one way. I think we hit their breaking point yesterday. 8 plus hours of driving would do any boy in.

We left from Big D where we got the rental SUV since it's funner to trash someone else's car when your taking a 7 day trip. 10 minutes into the trip we hit construction..go figure. So we were stuck in traffic for a good 30-45 minutes going less than 5 miles an hour. The boys were already anxious and asking the number one question of all children 17 and younger when taking a car trip. "Are we there yet?" Yes those words are like nails on a chalkboard to any parent.

After we finally get out of the construction and actually moving more than 60 miles an hour the second most aggrevating question is "I gotta go potty!" Since we are training the Bossyboy to go potty, this makes traveling by car a bit more of a challenge. Needless to say I think we visited every Valero down I35.

When finally settling in, Bossyboy discovered a string from his car seat, which set off the other boys interest. This must have been some kind of magical string that gave super powers because some how all 3 children were fighting over this string. Leave it to my children to find something anything to argue about even if it's a piece of string. I could already see this was gonna be a loooonnnnggg trip.

The oldest was in dire need of something to do as he was already griping that this is boring blah blah I just wanna go home. So I gave him the map and told him to find 35S. I told him the town we were in and had him mark the towns as we passed through. This helped all a good 2 hours. He kept asking when were going to be in Wacko so he could mark it off. I had to explain there was a "wacko in Waco, but the towns name is not Wacko." He was still determined to call it wacko.

4 hours in and things are going fairly smoothly for the most part. The hubs and I had switched drivers and we were on our way again after stop number two thousand seventy two. Suddenly Gameboy is feeling ill, the vomiting kind of ill. Luckily a good Mom scout is always prepared as I had decided to keep the kfc bag for trash purposes. He was able to ralph in the bag no harm no foul. Thank goodness, we were in a rental.

We get 7 plus hours into the trip and were thinking were in the homestretch. We were getting excited. Then the sign for the beach said 53 miles. I think the hubs and I both were going to cry. So we start singing and playing little games and the hubs decided it's time to sing 99 bottles of beer on the wall. Yes we (the hubs and I) sang at the top of our lungs all the way down to 1 bottle of beer on the wall. We were laughing and carrying on as if we were drunken idiots, with out the actual alcohol. I really could have uses a bottle or two from that wall at this point. The kids were laughing at us and some what enjoying themselves. That got us through a whole 20 minutes. 30 more minutes to go. Bossy boy is crying to potty and we were determined WE WILL NOT STOP AGAIN! So for once I encouraged him to go ahead and potty in his pullup. He would not have it whatsoever.

8+ hours in we finally made it to the hotel. Its 11:30 at night Bossyboy finally relented to sleep. Hubs went into get our room and comes back with the news that they messed up the reservation and only have a room with a king size bed left. At this point I could care less if we stayed on a cot at the Salvation Army. I just wanted a bed but Hubs was furious. Since we didn't have much choice we took our king bed and our sweet children slept on the floor. Serves them right for making us stop every thirty minutes.