FV 2012: Home!

We left New Jersey late in the afternoon on Monday July 30^th and made it just inside the Ohio border by midnight.  The kids had napped later in the evening, so they were up playing games with me until almost 11pm and then I put them to bed and then played copilot until Brad was too tired to drive.  We stopped at a Cracker Barrel parking lot (there was another RV there too).  I was excited to have breakfast there in the morning. 

Being silly and playing games in RV.  Clothes were optional on the way home.

 

Everyone was asleep in their regular beds that night.  Then around 2 am Joel was up crying, Vince woke up around 4 am, both with fevers.  I had a little bit of infant Tylenol with us, but only enough for them to each get 1 dose.  We spent the night watching movies, cuddling, and them crying on my lap on the dinette bed.  It was less than pleasant for me.  They were hot and when they cuddled me I felt like I was on fire!  I spent the night/morning trying to keep the kids quiet so Brad and Cecilia could sleep.  We needed at least 1 well rested adult to finish driving up home and it wasn’t going to be me if I was awake all night with kids.

Vince playing!

On the bright side they had no other symptoms, just a fever and after a quick trip to a pharmacy for some ibuprofen they slept a good portion of the drive home.  The challenge in a motorhome is keeping them away from their sister.  Two sick kids is one thing, but I really did’t want a sick infant!

At one point Vince told me his tummy hurt.  I looked at him and said “Are you going to puke?  I don’t want a mess in the motorhome.  If you are going to get sick you have to tell me.”  He said “No, Mommy I just puked one time at Uncle Dave’s and that is it!  Do you remember that Mommy?”  I remembered all too well.  While Brad was on his trip in China and India we went to Brad’s Uncle Dave’s house for Aunt Linda’s surprise birthday party.  Cecilia wasn’t very old (a few weeks).  I probably shouldn’t have attempted to take the kids, but I was so tired of being home alone and I really wanted to celebrate Aunt Linda’s birthday.  Plus, I knew there would be a ton of family to help me with the kids.  At one point during the night (about an hour after we got there) someone said there was a problem with one of the kids and something told me it was one of mine, but I was with them less than 2 minutes before that and they were fine.  I went to take a look anyway and there was Vince vomiting all over the floor, right in front of the bathroom door.  Uncle Dave’s house hardly has any rugs or carpeting downstairs but Vince managed to vomit on a rug.  After the cleanup I packed up the kids, headed home and I wanted to crawl in a hole.  There may have been an email to Brad asking him why the heck he left me with 3 small children and that Cecilia and I were going on vacation when he got home.  I should have followed through with that threat.

Vince sleeping away his fever.

Joel feeling better on the way home.

As we were driving home we got stuck in traffic.  Brad and I were laughing because the only traffic we hit the whole trip was trying to get back into Illinois.   After everything we saw, Illinois was the last state I would want to wait in a traffic jam to enter!  But alas, that is where we live and work, so I had no choice.

Cecilia snoozing away using a ball as a leg rest

Cecilia stretching out during our dinner break on the way back.

We made it home the next evening and as much fun as we had everyone was happy to be home and exhausted.  Vacation took a toll on all of us and it took a few days before we were all back on a real schedule or at least sort of a schedule.