The thing with planning with this family, though, is that nothing ever goes as planned. I called my mom to tell her about my plan, and she had other plans already made to have a medical procedure during that time. So I called my sister Shauna (who lives in Idaho Falls) to see if she could watch my kids. But she had other plans to go away with her husband for the weekend to celebrate their anniversary.
So my plans were cancelled. And I was really, really sad.
But then my dear husband, suggested we just change our plans to include taking all of the kids with us. Doing that would send the chaos level exponentially higher, and it would make the costs soar too. Instead of a hotel room, we would need to rent a house. Instead of feeding 5 people on the road, we would be feeding 9. It would be so much more than I had originally planned for. But, the next day wore on, and I decided I needed the vacation badly enough to just jump in and take them all.
And then the plan changed again. My mom called to say that her procedure had been postponed, and she could keep our four younger kids. But I had already embraced the plan to take them all, so I was torn as to what I should decide. Scott said we should just ask the boys which they would prefer. I set them down and laid out both options - going to Utah or staying at Grandma's - and tried to make each sound equally fun. Owen and Aaron instantly decided they wanted to go to Utah, and Nate said he wanted to go to Grandma's. But withing 30 seconds, Nate changed his mind to Utah because he couldn't bare the thought of being separated from Aaron.
The plan was decided. Our whole family of 9 would make the trip to Utah. Or so we thought....
I had two days to scramble and find a house for us to rent last minute. I stayed up till 1:30 am that night (Monday), looking up places anywhere between Salt Lake and Provo, and emailing their owners about availability. The next day responses came back to me - everything was booked. I couldn't find a place for our family to stay, which meant we would have to leave the boys in Aberdeen and stay in a hotel room instead. All day Tuesday, I thought about how I would break the news to them. But then an owner emailed me to say, that while the house I had inquired about was booked, he had another option that was available. A condo in Pleasant Grove. It slept 6-7, but we figured we'd make it work. I booked it the day before we were to leave on our trip, and then I started packing.
Wednesday after school, I attended 5 kids' parent teacher conferences, then loaded our family of 9 up at 8:30 at night, and set out driving for Utah. It was such a peaceful drive compared to other trips in our suburban. Having extra space so the kids weren't on top of each other, made all the difference. But no trip can go totally smoothly. Owen got sick and threw up three times along the drive. Thankfully we had brought a bowl for him (experience has taught us to ALWAYS be prepared for car sickness). But we had brought all sorts of car snacks, including red licorice, and that is what he had been eating before getting sick. And while most of it landed in the bowl, I've got red splatter stains on one of my new seatbelts in the backseat of my new van.
Scott and I took turns driving and sleeping, and finally just before 2:30am we arrived (the delays of stopping for car sickness made us arrive later than we had planned).
Earlier that day, the owner had called to tell me that he owned two condos - the one we were renting and one just across the hall. He said the other one was vacant, but was missing a couch (it was out being cleaned). He offered the use of the second condo if we decided we needed more sleeping space. Turns out, that other condo was heaven sent. We had Sara and Savannah sleep across the hall, then had everyone else over in the main condo, so everyone had a bed. He didn't charge us for the other condo, other than the cleaning fee.
We tried to have Kate sleep alone in a bedroom over in the girls' condo, but she freaked out. I thought having a quiet bedroom to herself would help her sleep better, but the unfamiliar surroundings made her inconsolable. So, after arriving at 2:30, we had to carry in all our stuff and make bedroom assignments. Kate had slept briefly (about 45 minutes) during the second hour of our drive, and had been awake the rest of the trip. I knew she was exhausted, but she had caught her second or third wind, and was running around exploring everything. We finally got all the kids settled down to sleep by 3am. All except Kate.
I had tried putting her in the porta crib in a room by herself, and she freaked out. So I tried moving the crib into Sara and Savannah's room, so she could see she wasn't alone, but she still cried. So I ended up sitting out in the living room with her in my arms, until she finally fell asleep. Every time I would move to put her down, she would wake up and start to fuss. I finally got her in the crib, and sat nearby for her to see me. She would open her eyes, I would smile at her, she would smile at me, then she would close her eyes. Finally, at 4:00am, she was asleep sound enough for me to go back to the main condo and crawl into bed. I was exhausted.
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