Iowa: Day 3

We were going to try to go to the pool today, but it didn't work for us because when we woke up, it was raining (again).  I was disappointed, because I figured that meant that we'd have to be stuck in the house all day.  It was nice just hanging out in the house yesterday, but the kids really needed to get out and do something.  Especially because Silas was having a hard time sharing with Punkin and that just led to a lot of fighting with each other.  It's frustrating to both the kids and the moms, so we were hoping to get out and do something.  It made it a bit worse because Jasmine is watching a little girl this week named River, so not only did Punkin and Silas have to share with each other, they had to share with River, too.  And having three kiddos 4 and under in one small room for the day wasn't really going to work out.

We squeezed the 3 munchkins into the back of the car!

Eventually we decided that even though it was raining, we would go into downtown Independence so we could go to some of the little shops and so I could take pictures of the buildings and whatnot.  We piled all three kids in the car and went down to this little country/antique shop called The Little Red School House and looked around in there for a bit, then tried to find postcards in the dollar store, with not much luck.  I was determined to find postcards to send home from Iowa since I didn't get a chance to send any from Chicago, but I so far I hadn't been able to find any in any of the store we went to.  We stopped in Connie's Hallmark and the drugstore, then we went to S&K Collectibles on the main street through town and I was finally able to find my postcards.  As we were leaving the shops, we realized the kids needed to be changed and it was time for lunch and nap, so we decided to head back to Jasmine's house (like a mile or two away - how's that for convenient?!) and go back to downtown later in the afternoon.

Trying to get on a bike in downtown

We did lunch and nap as planned, and then River's family came to get her, so Jasmine and I were ready to take Silas and Punkin back into downtown.  We got back in the car and drove back downtown, then parked on one side of the street and got out to walk around a bit.  Punkin really liked being able to walk instead of having to be in her stroller and found plenty of stuff to play with.  We went into Laree's and I was able to find some more (and different) postcards to buy.  There were also tons of toys in the store, but Punkin was mostly fascinated with several huge stuffed dogs that she found and spent a good bit of time sitting on the floor, petting "her" puppies.

After heading home from downtown, the rest of the day was uneventful.  We had corn on the cob and salad for dinner (the kids had some leftover chicken breast too) and Jasmine forced me to watch The Bachelorette against my will (despite my best efforts, I found myself actually somewhat interested and felt really bad for Chris when she told him to get lost).  Tomorrow we're going to Backbone State Park for a picnic!

Iowa: Day 2

Iowa: Day 2 was a whole lotta nothing.  After the adventures in Chicago and the long drive back to Iowa, no one was really in a hurry to do anything exciting.  I wanted to go to church, so when we got up in the morning, Jasmine called the only Catholic church in town and found out that mass was at 10, which gave me plenty of time to take a shower and get ready to go.  I had also decided that I was famished and nothing less than McDonald's for breakfast was going to satisfy me.  So after I was all ready to go, Jon and I climbed in the car and headed five minutes down the road to the only McDonald's in town.  Jon had gone out the night before to get some groceries and brought me back a huge box of Luvs diapers for Punkin, so I bought breakfast for everyone to pay them back.  After hardly eating anything for the last day and a half, those two little sausage burritos tasted like manna from heaven.  Of course I spilled some schmutz on my shirt, though.  Go fig!

St. John's Catholic Church, where I went to mass

After McDonald's, we were still way early for church and I had no desire to go sit and be stared at by the locals, so Jon drove me around through Independence and showed me where they take Silas to play, and where his mom lives, among other places.  When we eventually got to the church, Jon dropped me off out front and I went inside.  The church looks a lot bigger from the outside than it really is.  I liked it, though.  It was old, and it smelled like a church.  Everything was wood and glass.  I sat halfway up on the middle aisle and was very happy that no one seemed to be staring at me - all the people were really nice.

I had a moment of panic, though.  During communion, everyone filed themselves out of their aisles - no ushers standing there to make sure that everyone waited patiently - and we stood in line to go to the front of the church.  But I quickly realized that people were making the line in the middle of the aisle and the outsides of the aisle were for people heading back to their seats.  So I got confused with where I was supposed to stand, especially because I knew I wanted wine and no one in front of me was getting it.  I couldn't figure out whether I was supposed to get wine, then head back down the middle aisle, or get wine and then make my way to the outside of the pews and come in from the side.  It was all very confusing, but thankfully the guy two people ahead of me got wine and I just followed him back down the middle aisle.

Part of downtown Independence

After mass, I went outside to wait for Jon and took some pictures of the town.  It's a very cute little town - the epitome of small town America.  There's one main grocery store called Fareway, and then the tiniest little Super Wal-Mart I've ever seen in my life.  It also has a cute little main street with a pharmacy, a hardware store and some specialty shops.  It really does remind me of Main Street at the Magic Kingdom at Disney World.  It's the kind of town that I would love to live in one day - it seems like a great place to raise kids and know they're going to turn out okay and with wholesome family values.


Shortly after I got back from church, we had lunch and then the kids went down for a nap.  Jasmine needed groceries for the week, so she and I went to Wal-Mart while the kids slept and Jon kept an eye on them.  We got pulled pork for sandwiches, chicken and tomato sauce for pasta, salad stuff and grapes for snacks.  Jasmine also got Punkin a little "Iowa Princess" t-shirt and I bought Punkin a Dora blanket since Silas has his own blanket that he's protective over.  I was worried Punkin would wake up and freak out when she saw I wasn't there, but once we got back we found they were still sleeping.  Jasmine spent the rest of the day making pulled pork and pasta so we would have stuff for dinner and lunches for the next few days, and the kids spent the rest of the day in the playroom alternately playing and fighting with each other till bathtime and bedtime.

Ah, toddlers.  They're awesome.

Chicago: Day 2/Iowa: Day 1

The plan for today was to get up and attempt to get into downtown Chicago, seeing as how it was Saturday and the traffic wouldn't be as intense.  But when we all woke up and Jasmine opened the curtains in the hotel room, we saw that it was a miserable, rainy day.  So we nixed the Chicago idea.  I was disappointed, because I really wanted to be able to say I had gone to Navy Pier.  But taking the kids down there in the rain would have been a stupid idea.

Starting off on our trip!

We decided to have a leisurely morning in the room, then pack up our stuff and get on our way to Iowa so everyone could relax at Jasmine's house.  I wasn't looking forward to the 5 hour drive because the longest Punkin had ever been in the car was about 2 hours and I didn't know how she would do.  She wound up surprising me, though.  After we were checked out and loaded into the car, we took off and she fell asleep pretty quickly.

Iowa Scenery

The drive itself was quite uneventful.  Jasmine's car doesn't have A/C so it was warm, but the airflow from her open window made it bearable.  Most of the beginning of the trip was cloudy as we were driving by Illinois corn and soybean fields.  I really liked the scenery - Jasmine says it wasn't as pretty as the route she took to get to Chicago, but I still enjoyed it . It reminded me of when I was a kid and we would drive from Texas to Pennsylvania.  Lots of low hills and farmland, with big white farm houses and fields of cows and horses.  The kids weren't nearly as interested in the scenery as I was, so thankfully they were really interested in Punkin's Dora and Barney videos on her DVD player.

The gas station we stopped at

At one point as we were driving through Illinois, we realized we needed gas soon, so we got off at the next exit.  The only gas station on the entire exit was 3 miles off the highway in a tiny little town called Lyndon (population 1,500).  I loved the little town - you could tell, even just driving down the two lane road, that everyone in that town knew each other.  We found the little Conoco gas pumps, which were sitting in front of a little place called Gibson's General Store.  The station was right across from a corn field sitting between two houses, and it was so CUTE!  I swear... if I could be sure that I was within a reasonable driving distance of a Wal-Mart and a Taco Bell, I would LOVE to pack Punkin up and move to a tiny little town like that.  I even looked on Zillow as soon as we got to Jasmine's house to see if they had any houses for sale in the town (there were 2).

The People of Iowa Welcome You!

The Mighty Mississip!

Not long after we got back on the highway, we passed into Iowa and I was able to cross state #26 off my list of states visited.  I am officially half finished with my Bucket List goal of visiting all 50 states!  I'm still behind, though.  I wanted to hit a new state every year until I turned 50, but I'm 29 and I'm still only at state 26.  So hopefully for the next couple of years I can hit at least 2 new states per year to catch up.  I was driving, so I made Jasmine pull over so I could take a picture of the Iowa sign, lol.   I even took one with my phone so I could upload it to Facebook and show people that I really WAS in the land of corn!  Not long after that, I got really excited because we crossed the Mississippi River - something else that reminded me of when we used to take road trips when I was a kid.

We stopped in Cedar Rapids to have lunch at Olive Garden.  It was nice to get out of the car to stretch, but disappointing that we still had an hour or so to go to get to Jasmine's house.  We ate fairly quickly and got back in the car.  Punkin put up a fuss - I think because she was hot and was REALLY tired of being in the car.  She didn't do too bad though.  I really am proud of how well she has handled all of the traveling thus far.  She's not been good at long car trips in the past but she seemed to make the best of this one.  I think it's because she had her DVD player.  I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to buy her one of her own since the one we have is my friend Michelle's and we'll have to return it.

We drove through downtown Independence, but I was so tired that I didn't pay much attention to it.  I'm hoping we'll get to go into town one day while we're here so I can take some pictures and experience a taste of small-town life.  Once we got to Jasmine's house, we did a whole lotta NUTHIN.  No one even really wanted to move.  The kids played in the playroom while the adults just vegged out.  I met Jon, Jasmine's husband, and their friend Dave, who kind of lives in the basement like some old hermit of an uncle.  He's nice though, so I can't really complain.  We had Hamburger Helper for dinner with ground beef (only important since Jasmine has been trying to sell me on the idea of eating ground deer meat - ew) and again I was surprised with Punkin - she's not a beef eater but she totally polished off a big bowl of that enchilada Hamburger Helper!  Bedtime went easy - I rocked her in Silas' wicker rocking chair and sang Rock-A-Bye-Baby to her over and over and she fell asleep on my shoulder.  I love rocking my babe. :-)

Jasmine and I watched part of The Proposal with Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds until I fell asleep on the couch.  It was a damn long day, and I was tired!  Thankfully the couch was comfy and I was able to sleep all night!

Chicago: Day One - The Bad Stuff!

I was really excited to go to the Lincoln Park Zoo.  In the weeks leading up to this vacation, I researched it on the internet and found it's one of the last free zoos in the US.  So I was super excited about going, especially because it was going to be free and because I know how much Punkin loves animals.  I wish I had been more aware of where our hotel was in relationship to the zoo, though.  We pulled it up on the GPS on my phone and found it was about 12 miles away by way of I-90, which is not that far at all.

Once we got going, though, we found that it certainly wasn't going to take us only 20 minutes, like the GPS said.  The traffic in Chicago is HORRIBLE.  HOR-RI-BLE.  Almost as soon as we got on I-90, the traffic started, and it was dense.  There was no way to move from lane to lane and we never broke 10 mph the whole time.  The kids were okay at first... they both dozed off.  But almost an hour later, when we had only gone about 5 miles, Silas woke up in a complete meltdown.  Punkin slept through it at first but soon it escalated into a fit the likes of which I've never seen and she woke up crying, too.  Silas was screaming and crying so hard I thought he was going to throw up and choke.  He wouldn't calm down for anything and both Jasmine and I started to get panicky.  Jasmine was getting claustraphobic and I was starting to have a panic attack.  About that same time, my phone died, and we had no GPS.  So we were stuck in this horrible traffic with a screaming toddler, a crying toddler, no idea where we were and no idea how to get anywhere.  I remembered that GPS told us to get off at Lawrence Street, so we looked out for it, but it was closed due to construction.  Silas was still screaming, so we tried to get off at the next exit, but it was closed for construction too.

Chilling in the car while we panicked on the side of the road.

That's the point I completely lost control.  I was in absolute panic-attack mode.  I could NOT GET OFF THE DAMN HIGHWAY.  There was NOWHERE to go.  No exits were open, no lanes were moving any faster than 5 mph, Silas was having a nightmare meltdown, Punkin was scared, confused and crying, there was no air conditioning in the car and I had no idea where we were.  We finally crept up on a little sidewalk on the right side of the highway and I made Jasmine pull the car off the road so everyone could try and calm down.  I used Jasmine's phone to call my dad in Florida to tell him what was going on while she took the kids out of their car seats to calm them down.  I was on the phone with my dad for almost 20 minutes, trying to tell him where we were and what was going on while he looked Chicago up on MapQuest and gave us some suggestions.  We were only 5 miles from the zoo (according to MapQuest) but going there at that point was the farthest thing from our minds.  We just wanted to de-traumatize the kids and get back to the hotel.  I called Monica and let her know we were turning around.  We finally got back in the car and eased our way back into the traffic, then crept along till we came to the next exit, where we got off.

We found a Dunkin Donuts and pulled in and got the kids some donuts to eat, hoping food would appease them for a while.  I was still in a panic, though, because I knew the only way to get back to the hotel was to get on the same highway going in the other direction, and the traffic looked just as bad over there.  I couldn't take another hour of sitting in the car with screaming kids in the back.  I called my dad again and he gave me some more tips (gotta love my daddy!) on how to get back to the hotel from where we were.  The kids had been fed and they seemed to be happier and I was calming down a bit, so we got back in the car to head back to the hotel.

THANK THE GOOD LORD JESUS ABOVE, we hit a major detour on our way back to I-90 and managed to miss the majority of the traffic on the highway heading back.  It only took us 15 minutes to get back once we got going.  We got the kids upstairs and into the bath (they were a mess from donuts) and then dressed for bedtime.  We called Monica and asked if she wanted to bring Elodie up for a pajama party and she did, so the three kids ran around the hotel room together till bedtime while Jasmine and Monica kept a close eye on them - I don't know if it was stress related or what, but I had developed a fever and a stomach bug and was curled up in bed trying not to die.  After Monica and Elodie left, Jasmine and Silas crawled into their bed and Punkin and I snuggled into ours.

I wish the day had turned out better, because I was really disappointed about the zoo.  Punkin had been asking about seeing animals for days and I didn't even get a chance to show them to her.  It was really nice being able to meet Monica and Elodie though!  I've now officially met 4 women from the BZ board - Jenn and Evan, Genia and Bryson, Monica and Elodie, and Jasmine and Silas!