The Longest Day - June 20, 2006

We made the trek back from Oklahoma yesterday. Let's just start out by saying that it took 13.5 hours. It *should* take 12 hours when you have two little kids in the car. It never seems to work out that way for us... We left at 4am, and made fantastic time until we hit the St Louis area. We stopped for lunch about 20 miles outside of St Louis, and Hannah drank way too much water. Just as we made our way into St Louis, Hannah screams that she needs to pee. We get off on the first exit inside city limits and stop at a questionable gas station, but when you gotta, you gotta go. Once we got back to the car, I put Cinderella on the DVD player for Hannah to watch. We get back on the interstate and are almost immediately stuck in gridlock. We aren't moving AT ALL! After about ten minutes, Hannah starts shrieking that she needs to pee again. I'm unsure of what to do since we are STUCK. Eli's diaper bag was right next to me, so I put one of his diapers on Hannah. I explained that since it was an emergency it would be okay for her to go in a diaper... she can't. She's already conditioned to go only on the toilet (she's been trained for almost a year, but I didn't realize how well she was trained!!). Another ten minutes are spent coaxing her into using the diaper and holding her on the edge of her carseat (to simulate sitting on a toilet) she's finally able to go. Another 20 minutes or so go by, and Eli is screaming for "nummies". Since we aren't going anywhere, I take him out of his carseat and nurse him. After an hour in St Louis, we finally cross the Mississippi River, and Cinderalla is over (OMG! Hannah watched an entire movie while we were stuck in traffic!!). We assume we are home free at this point with *just* 3 more hours of driving to get home. Nope, we hit two construction zones (probably the tenth zone of the trip), and slow WAY down. We made it home at 5:45pm.
Hannah says, "I hate it when we have to drive for three days!" (it was just one)
Pete says, "Usually the longest day of the year is June 21st, but this year it was June 19th!"