Speeding Ticket, Screaming Kids, Meandering Ways

As you may have previously read we woke up rather early on our second day of travel. Actually after having no cribby for Timmy, working so hard to get him to sleep with me, I didn't sleep much of anything from the 1 am to 5 am time frame. Though I have to say I am sure I rested better in the hotel bed for those four hours than I would have in the car....ok boring!

G-man and B woke up and were making so much noise that I thought it best to take them down stairs with T-man. Anyway...you know that, but while I was down stairs typing my blog, and checking email, the kids were "chasing" T-man all around the foyer, and being a little noisy. The staff didn't seem to mind as they were setting up breakfast. They even let us sneak an early hot chocolate as well as a muffin.

We went back to the room, to find Emily wandering around looking for me. Lennie, my traveling buddy, was in the restroom getting dressed, and her little angels were still asleep. We wrangled everyone up and out the door, toting a ton of pillows and blankets and what nots with us.

Luckily it wasn't too busy of a morning and not many people eating breakfast at the ripe early 6 O'clock hour. Not feeling like making the kids sit too much, they ran around taking bits, and well yeah we called them back and threatened to throw their food away. We only had one orange juice spill all over the floor, and a yogurt casualty that seemed to make its way down my shirt and pant leg, right into my shoe. Nothing that a few paper towels and water couldn't fix.

Ok so we load the kids up and not too far out, the screaming fighting, laughing, hitting, seat swapping begins. I think we moved around to different spots every hour. I sat in the back so I could lean over the car seat to feed Timmy, and then Lennie sat in the way back at one point to separated overly excited and tired kids.

Countless replies from us "no we are not in Utah yet" were uttered. As well as "don't make your sister cry." Or "stop touching him." My favorite "Don't throw that." Or the "Stop laughing." Don't know why we said that, they were having a lot of fun, but it was out of control obnoxious nose snorting belly rolling laughter.

While all this is going on, probably not more than an hour into our day, I was trying to drive us as quickly and as safely as possible. But the New Mexico police officer thought I was going too fast. Oh well, after he took my licence and insurance, the kids began to panic and worry that he was going to take me to jail. And literally at that point it would have been a welcome adventure. This is my first ticket in years, I got one other one a month after my 16th birthday, the day I was going to an Erasure concert, and I thought for sure my parents weren't going to let me go. All they said was "its ok it happens, just be careful." I have been pulled over 10 other times but for some reason all the officers were more forgiving of my law breaking. Now that was a tangent for you.

When the officer came back to the car with my nice fat ticket, I had tears- ok I admit, I was sad and sure that it was going to be a $200 ticket that I couldn't pay, I really can't afford to even pay the gas for this adventure a whole other story...but anyway so I was trying not to cry, but Timmy was screaming, and other kids were crying and the officer says "Sounds like an un happy bunch." No kidding!! Then he politely explains my ticket that I could A- appear in court or B- pay it...well since I have no intention of going to Santa Fe to appear in court I told him I'd be paying it. He checked some box handed me the ticket, and then asked where we were headed in such a hurry. I don't think he has ever traveled in a car with six screaming kids...you want to go anywhere fast! We told him our destination was SLC and he reminded us that we should drive more carefully with such precious cargo. I agreed, and we took off.

I then told the kids that they really need to behave so I could concentrate on driving. It worked for a little bit. But T-man was getting really upset. So Lennie decided to drive and I hopped in back, popped my you know what out, and hoovered over his car seat and nursed him. This worked several times, allowing us more time to drive and get lost.

Did I say lost? Well we didn't really get lost, we just decided to take the scenic add an extra three hours to our trip, drive. Northern New Mexico is really pretty, as well as Southern Colorado and as the kids said "looks like Utah." I didn't realize how many national parks y'all have in those parts. And just because a road on the map is a red line, doesn't mean its a highway, you have to look closer and the fatter red lines mean a divided highway, of two lanes or possibly four, usually for passing, a lighter red line means its a drivable possibly dirt road...so if you miss your first exit and don't realize it for thirty minutes, because the driver wasn't looking for the signs, and the navigator decided to trust driver to look while she read the kids a novel- you might want to just turn around rather than looking at a map and saying, oh up ahead 50 miles is a "short cut" to get you back on the highway. It may just turn out to be a dirt road through a national park that you can only drive 20 miles per hour on. Not that I am speaking from experience.

More adventures later :)