The End of Day One

The End of Day One

Yes, we really are only at the end of day one. We were in a fairly crummy hotel probably not in the safest part of town; but we were able to afford a suite. The idea, or at least the adult thinking, was that the kids could crash in the “living room” part of the suite while Terri and Gretchen got to sleep in the “bedroom” part of the suite. Of course, this proved to be interesting.
After 7 showers, wet swim suits, wet towels, wet floor and wet clothes that all had to be hung up on the rail outside the hotel; it was time for dinner. You got it PBJ. For that is what we planned to live on for the four days we were on the road. We fixed the sandwiches, this time without the added sand – more or less anyway. For some reason when one goes to the beach in a van the whole van becomes engulfed in some kind of sand storm.
Everyone fed and clean it was time for a movie and to settle down. All the kids were stretched out on the floor with tons of pillows and blankets; the movie was started along with mass amounts of construction. For those of you who have never traveled with 7 children be warned; fort building becomes a huge construction project and can take hours. Then the arguing starts over who gets to sleep in what fort. Obviously they didn’t need the movie or the tv, the kids had plenty to do on their own.
We checked on them several times knowing that trying to put an end to the fort building would cause us more grief then it was worth; so the kids finally settled down way after 10:00. I don’t really know what time the drifting began, but slowly the “bedroom” space was invaded. First it was Jacob – he couldn’t sleep, so now there were three of us in the bed. Then was Lorenzo – he had a bad dream and could only be put to sleep by my singing “Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer” which I kept falling asleep in the middle of singing and he kept waking me up. Of course, the words I sang were in the wrong order. Eventually he gave up and went to sleep. Now there were four of us attempting to sleep in the bed; Jacob and Lorenzo very comfortably I might add. The third to join was Eliza. She is just a mama’s girl and couldn’t stand to be that far away from her mom and still be expected to sleep; never mind it was less than 10 feet and on the other side of the wall. So she joined the bed sleeping across the foot of the bed. I do believe Terri slept through the night. I on the other hand went and joined the rest of the kids in one of the forts. Day one and night one were done and we had all survived somehow.

Peace,
G