Flying Solo

It's a girls' weekend...Brad left on a business trip Friday afternoon, so we were on our own. As much as I love spending time with the girls, I really hate weekend business trips -- for anyone -- and I totally miss having another set of hands.

I decided to take the girls to visit some friends yesterday, so I packed everyone up as soon as they were fed and dressed and we headed north. It should have been about a 1 hr. 45 min. drive, but we hit major traffic at the tolls and it turned into about 2 hr. 10 min. Seriously, we would have been fine if it hadn't been for the darn tolls. That was about the time that everyone started melting down, except for Sienna, who FINALLY fell asleep. Anyhow, we got there and my friend had invited several other moms with kids over, so there were about 10 kids altogether and 4 moms. Her neighbor was gracious enough to let us all pile into her above ground pool, so the kids had a ball swimming and splashing around. I was worried about having all three of them to manage, but after some craziness trying to get everyone suited up, floatied, sunblocked, etc., while Lyla cried to be fed, we were ok. Lyla fell asleep for a nice little lap on the pool deck as soon as I nursed her, and I was able to jump in the pool with Maddie and Sienna. Sienna is such a little water baby and wanted to be tossed up and down into the water almost the whole time. She's such a funny kid! (Pic above is of her and my friend Allison.)

After the pool, the other families left and we got the kids all on bikes and went for a little ride down to the cul-de-sac at the end of their street. From there we headed to another neighbor's house to pet and feed the chickens (this neighborhood in the country is MUCH more interesting than our new construction subdivision with no trees, LOL!). Maddie and Sienna thought the place was great. There were even grape vines and crabapple trees, so they were finding all sorts of yummy stuff they thought the chicken would love to eat, poor bird!

The ride home was crazy. All of them needed naps, but Sienna would not give in and kept waking the other two up. Maddie was totally ticked off about it, since Sienna kept yelling at the top of her lungs. She also kept scaring the baby awake, which meant that Lyla cried most of the way home. We made a mid-trip stop at McDonald's out of desperation, where I nursed Lyla and finally calmed her down while the other two ate. We're all strapped in and ready to get back on the road, and Maddie makes the dreaded announcement that she has to go potty. YIKES. Now I'm totally kicking myself for having remembered my friend Christine's idea to put the potty seat in the minivan, but having forgotten to actually DO it! I think Maddie must have actually sensed my desperation (could it be because I was begging her to PLEASE hold it for Mommy, just this one time, because Mommy really didn't want to have to take unload everyone and take all three kids into the stall at McDonald's...) because she agreed to hold it for the 40 minutes remaining in our ride. I felt so bad for her, but she didn't really seem like it was all that urgent. And it definitely saved my sanity a bit.

Anyhoo... we got home in time for a reasonable bedtime, which was good since we were all exhausted. I'm planning a much more low key day today, though I'm really glad I got to see Allison and the kids got to play with their friends.