Road Trippin' With My Two Favorite Allies

So we road tripped it out to California and back last week with our almost two year old.  Atticus had driven to Denver before when I tagged along with my parents last summer to see my brother's family.  He did awesome on that trip.  Only one 20 minute stop the entire eight hours out there.  But then again, I was sitting in the back with him so that was super fun for him.

So for this trip I made sure to be over prepared.  I got him a tray for his car seat and used a cookie sheet as a magnetic surface.  He had puzzles (cut from pictures of us) and other toys I glued magnets to.  I made him some sensory bags filled with clear hair gel and filled with I-Spy type toys (bugs, beads, letters, buttons, etc) I also made him a binder of coloring pages and games, got some fresh books, as well as some books on tape with his own set of little Jazz speakers (thanks Granny!), plus favorite toys I had hidden for a week or two, and plenty of snacks.  We also didn't let him play with our phones for about two weeks before the trip so games would seem new, but he didn't end up playing on our phones for the trip either.

The best thing we did though, was wait until this trip to turn his car seat front-facing.  We stuck him right in the middle seat and at least a third of the entire trip was him just enjoying his new view.  He loved pointing out EVERY semi truck we passed and telling us whether we were in the sun or shade.  And his new favorite car thing to do which started on this trip, is demanding the red lights turn green.

This is mostly all he played with all the way to California 

The trip out went smoothly.  We left (with Atticus and I still in jammies) at 5 a.m. on Sunday morning. (throw in the fact that it was daylight saving's that day and it actually felt like 4 a.m.)  We left that early because some with more experience informed us that on a Sunday, if you don't get through Vegas before noon, you will be stuck in hours-delaying traffic.  We spent Saturday night at Dan's parent's house in South Jordan and after leaving that early, I drove as far as Vegas while the boys slept most of the way.  We stopped in Cedar to stretch and I got dressed in a random SUU parking lot.  I'm pretty sure at least two people saw me.  After lunch in Vegas, Dan drove the rest of the way.  We took three stops total and made it to Anaheim before check-in and so met up with my brother and his family at a park.

The way back the next Thursday was less of a rush.  We left California late morning, and my son, exhausted from days in Disneyland, slept nearly all the way to Vegas.  We stopped in Vegas with hopes of showing Atticus the fountains at The Bellagio.  And he made my day when I asked him where we were and he said church.  But unfortunately we were an hour too early for the fountains to start for the day.  More unfortunately, we decided we'd better get back on the road so we had Carl's Jr. rather than Cheesecake Factory.  I'm still not over it.  Also, bathroom at Ceasar's Palace was the worst ever.  The roll of toilet paper was on the floor.  THE FLOOR!  

No fountains.  Boo.

 When I ask him to read to me, he always turns the book so I can see the pictures. 

As we were passing Hurricane just after 5 p.m. my car started making weird noises.  We pulled over and couldn't figure out what was wrong with it.  It sounded like I no longer had a muffler, and that maybe the timing of my engine was off.  The engine light came on after we'd pulled over so we called highway patrol.  They came out and long story short, it was determined that I had essentially lost a spark plug and we were towed back to St. George and checked into a hotel.

 This was his face the whole time in the back of the tow truck.  He was actually super pleased.

The next day we learned (and my understanding of this is not awesome so I'll explain in the best way can) that my spark plug blew, pulled out some sort of threading and melted some stuff while it was at it.  The garage people had never seen that on a Honda before and they did some crazy thing to seal stuff back together (instead of replacing the head which would have cost thousands) and the thing they did needed a while to seal completely before we drove it.  Originally they said 24 hours but then they changed the way they did it so that they thought we may be able to take it before closing that night.

In the meantime, we were mostly out of clean clothes since we'd been gone nearly a week, we had to check out of our hotel, we had no car, and we were stuck in St. George for the day.  We took a bus, in our gross clothes and I-don't-care hairdo's to go to the mall and see a movie. We got off at the wrong stop and Atticus immediately got a bloody nose.  Everywhere.  He was super tired and did not want us to touch him.  So there we were in our gross state with a screaming child covered in blood using the last two wipes we had and some leftover Disney napkins from the stroller.  We looked like serial-killer hobos.  It was quite the adventure.  Eventually Atticus stopped bleeding (though he had blood all over his shirt the rest of the day), he fell asleep for about an hour, and we made it to the Lego movie.  Atticus' first movie theater experience and he did awesome.

Most of our Hobo day was spent playing in the rocks found in generous amounts throughout St George, and pushing the stroller.

 If you look close, you can spot some of the blood that was all over him.

We made it back to the garage just before closing and they told us it was a bit of a risk trying to drive back that night but they thought we'd be okay.  They said the repairs they've done like that before have an 80% success rate and if it was to fail, it would do so in the next thousand miles and then we really would need to replace the head.  We were so done, so we took the risk and headed home more than 24 hours after we'd first passed through St. George.  (So now we're back we still have 600 miles to go before we know for sure if my car is really fixed)  We stayed under 3,000 RPM the rest of the way home, which is hard to do with my tiny car and it's tiny wheels, so as not to build up too much pressure behind the newly sealed whatever.  We stopped one more time jut for gas and Atticus stayed in his car seat, sleeping most of the way.

Not the way I would've loved to spend the return trip but it's only deterred Dan from further road trips.  I'd still do more.