You’re Leaving When?

So, it’s been a while since I posted, but I have good reasons.  We were on vacation!  And then I came back to work at the end of the quarter and all the ensuing madness related to getting caught up and doing my quarterly reports all at the same time.  Anyway, we’re back now, so how about I actually start posting again!

A week before we left for our beach vacation, we all headed to my hometown for my niece’s baptism.  It’s about a 3 1/2 hour drive from our house.  On the way home as Jack (understandably) fussed about being in the car so long, my husband looked at me and suggested that for our beach trip we leave at midnight instead of our typical 4 am.

The second the words came out of his mouth I knew that it was a good idea.  We were leaving Memorial Day weekend and I was fearful of traffic.  On top of that, part of the reason that we left at 4am in the past was so that the boys would sleep a good part of the ride.  Well, in the last year, Jack has gone from getting up at 8 or 9 on a weekend to getting up at 6.  Xander has always been an early riser.  So the thought was that if we leave at 6, the boys may just be awake enough to not really sleep very much.  That would be torture in the form of  10 hours in a car with tired/bored kids.  We consulted our bestest friends who would be traveling with us, and made a firm decision to leave at midnight.

On Friday night, we got the boys to bed at their regular time.  Packed up a few last minute items and the husband and I laid down to get some rest.  I can honestly say that I got about 3 1/2 hours of the worst, most broken-up sleep ever.  At 11:15, we gave up, got up, got dressed and packed the car.  Then we woke the boys.  Jack was hard to rouse, but once he was  up, he was EXCITED.  I woke Xander and he was PISSED.  He kept looking at me like  he wanted to say “What the hell is wrong with you? I’m supposed to be sleeping.”  I of course responded with my own “Now you know how it feels to be woken up in the middle of the night” look.

We tossed the boys in the car (ok, ok, we technically secured them in their car seats) still wearing their pajamas and we were off.  Surprisingly, Jack fell back to sleep relatively quickly.  Xander held on for a while, but eventually fell asleep.  By the time we hit Breezewood, everyone in the back seat was asleep.

You guys, this is the part where I tell  you how awesome it was leaving at midnight.  The traffic was non-existent.  Everyone slept.  We made excellent time.  We stopped for gas around 4 am.  At this point we were past Washington DC.  The lights from the gas station woke Jack.  I was worried, but he went back to sleep once we got on the road again.

The hardest part of the trip was actually from 4 am to 5 am.  My husband and I were restless and tired.  Once the sun started coming up, things were much better.  We stopped at 6:30 for breakfast (YAY Chick-fil-a!).  We like to take one longish stop and this was it.  We stopped for a total of an hour and then were right back on the road.

It was while we were at breakfast that I realized that I brought exactly zero shoes for Jack.  I thought that I had grabbed his sandals, but in reality I grabbed two pair of Xander’s sandals.  Needless to say, Jack wore sandals that were three sized too small to breakfast!

The last part of the trip was pretty quick.  After breakfast, it was only another 90 minutes until we arrived.  It was literally 9:00 when we crossed the bridge into the Outer Banks.  For anyone interested, it took us 8 1/2 hours total to get there.  Subtract the hour at breakfast and total driving time was 7 1/2 hours.  Not too shabby.

Of course, since it was 9 am when we arrived and we couldn’t get into our rental house until 2, we had a ton of time to kill.  We busied ourselves with shoe buying, minature golf playing (more to come one that!), lunch eating, and playing on the beach.  Eventually we were able to get into the house. We settled in for what would be a great week of fun!

Xander wide awake under a blanket at 1 am

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