Sunday, November 21, 2010

A trip into Thanksgiving's past...

This week as we all prepare for Thanksgiving with menus, schedules for house visits, and decorations, I thought I'd take a little trip down memory lane to Thanksgiving for this little family three years ago. 

We headed up to Cascade, Iowa to my mom's "homeland and motherland" as she calls it.  First mistake made:  travelling to northern Iowa in late November.  Okay, moving on.  Now we had heard the reports from all the experts about that big, dang blizzard heading across the plains and destined to smack into Iowa Wednesday, but never fear because we had a plan.  All you need is a plan.  We left Tuesday night and did the first half of the drive, stopping in Cameron, Mo.  We figured we had it made with only a short 5-6 hour drive the next day. 

Second mistake made:  when you get a "jump start," you might think about leaving in the morning a little earlier than 11am...see when you leave at 11am, then you haven't gained yourself any ground at all.  So at 11am we'd finished our hearty breakfast and headed off. 

Let's take a closer look into the basics of this vacation.  We had my husband and I and our two children.  Payton was almost 4, and Ella was (are you ready for this, because this was mistake number three)...Ella was 3 months old.  And the crowd goes, "oooohhhh, eeeewwwwwwww."  We were also travelling in Tim's truck which for some reason had a nasty draft on the floor panel of the passenger side.  No problem, right?  I'll just throw a blanket over my feet as we head into mistake number four:  the blizzard.  Oh, and the blanket?...turns out they're only effective at trapping warmth from feet that have circuation....

So the snow picks up, and pretty soon we're in serious blizzard conditions.  We're now going to northern Iowa at a cool 30mph.  After a couple white-knuckled hours we pulled off in Des Moines for a bathroom break and a chance to feed the very grouchy Ella.  Awesome thing about this particular Wendy's in the state Capitol was that it didn't have a changing table for my daughter who had blown poo all the way up her back and out her shirt.  So I have Payton, Ella, and myself crammed into a bathroom stall....not the handicapped stall...a regular stall.  Ella was screaming bloody murder because of the poo situation and I had nothing to lay her on but the lid of the bathroom trashcan.  So that's what we did.  Scream Scream Scream...Wipe Wipe Wipe...Coats and mittens and poo and hats and hot and sweaty and people and loud and people and screaming and wiping. 

After that and a quick bite to eat for us all we headed back out, hauling ass at 30 mph again. 

After 8 hours we still hadn't made it to Cascade.  The kids were screaming tired, we were getting lost multiple times, and we were pulling over every 30 minutes just to give ourselves a time-out.  (The snow was lovely when standing on the side of the road just trying to get some sanity back.)

It.  Was.  Awful.

Finally we made it to my Aunt and Uncles house and got some much needed food, beer, and sleep. 

It was probably the worst road trip I've ever been on in my entire life, and if you told me that I was going to relive it again tomorrow....I'd  start packing with a smile on my face.  It was an awful trip, but in the end, I had Thanksgiving with my Iowa family, and I got to play cards with my Grandma. 

Happy Thanksgiving to you all, with lots of love. 

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