Monkeys and Sardines

The boys and I went to Portland this week to visit my mom's sisters who all gather together at one of their houses every year. Since it's a rare occurrence to see them all (they live in Wyoming, California, Oklahoma and Oregon), we loaded up and headed out. Since Bounce has the cast on, and his leg is stuck at two 90 degree angles, I waffled a bit about going, but since these ladies are my last remaining family (besides my own siblings) on my mom's side, I felt compelled to go. Life is too short, and if we had to stop 15 times, we'd do it. Oh, the optimism!

We left our house at 1 p.m. and arrived at our motel at 9 p.m. Did I mention that it's a 4 hour trip normally to Portland? Yeah. Actually, we stopped at a friend's house and her husband restructured our car seats (he's a firefighter with know-how), we stopped to see DH at work before we left the county, we stopped for gas, and in a separate place, stopped for air for the tires. We also made the mistake of stopping at Wal-mart (oh, I love it and hate it!) where we could all go to the bathroom (without the double stroller) and apparently check out ALL of the toys!

I've never seen boys so excited to get to a motel before. I tried to keep them from jumping on the beds, honestly, I did. Even Bounce was bouncing! Why do my kids enjoy Motel 6 so much? Every hotel/motel is a Motel 6. This one (not a Motel 6) had a kitchenette, and SWK decided that we should load up the fridge with everything we had. Sadly all we had was water bottles and apple juice. Oh, and the pizza that arrived at 9:45 p.m. I've learned the secret of getting my kids to eat a lot. Don't feed them. Seriously, I had asked for about 2.5 hours if they were hungry (or hung-gly as Bounce says) but kept getting "nopes" in response. I decided about 20 minutes from the hotel that we'd just wait and order pizza as soon as we got there. They scarfed down 2 slices each plus SWK ate crackers after.

Then came bedtime, or not. That's where the "monkeys" part comes in. SWK and Bounce were so wound up, that getting Ju Ju Bees to sleep was almost impossible. Then after threat of much impending doom, they finally fell asleep. I finally put Ju Ju Bees down in his Pack n' Play and fell onto my slice of the bed (did I mention that it was a full-sized bed and the boys were sleeping with me?). This was all about midnight. About 2 a.m. I woke up enough to realize that the room was a little chilly, so I got up like a good mommy and turned up the air to make it a little warmer for my monkeys who were not staying under the slippery motel bedding. However, I barely bumped Ju Ju Bees Pack n' Play. D'oh! Long story short: after an hour or so of trying to get him back to sleep (with no bottle as I had, like an idiot, forgotten the formula in WA and only had enough for the morning) AND put him in his own bed, I finally caved and put him in my bed (ahem, our bed). Alas, the "sardines" part of the title. At one point, I even had all three of them laying perpendicular to me (of course, SWK is so long now that his feet and my feet were touching (yuck! I don't like feet so much!)) and my slice was larger than than 1/2 inch. Needless to say, not much sleep happened, except for SWK who woke up at 7:30 fully refreshed with a need to chat with everyone. On a different note, I think the fall when he was 2 may have done something to his sinuses because the boy snores and I had never noticed it before. I guess when you're "sleeping" two feet from a person you notice more about them. Like Bounce who woke up every (seemed like) two minutes and yelled, "Hold me up." Or Ju Ju Bees who woke up and smiled and put his fingers in my mouth. Or like the...sorry dozed for a minute. Must go rest!