« Escaping Rita | Main | I wish it were Spring again »
September 28, 2005
We're back from the clusterfuck known as Rita
From the trip that should not have been.
Against my intuition (dammit, I need to start listening to Oprah), we went ahead and left on Wednesday for Houston. It took us 3 hours to get from the airport to my in-law's house. It should have taken 30-45 minutes. The kids were good on the plane, but Katie was a screaming mess in the car. I broke the law more times this last week than ever before in my life, taking her out of the carseat for comfort or to nurse while we were on the road. I only took her out when we were in stop-and-go traffic, or just stopped, but a fender bender wouldn't have been great either.
We skipped town on Thursday, moving up our planned trip to Dallas to visit friends. It took us 8 hours to get there, about twice what it should have, but we were lucky. We didn't even need to stop for gas, fortunate since there wasn't much of it. We did stop a couple times for the kids, once for ice cream and again for dinner. They were remarkably good on their second long day of travel.
We stayed with friends until Sunday. They have a 3.5 year old daughter and a son 5 days younger than Katie. Jamie amazed us by sticking to G like glue. The two of them would just head up to the playroom for hours, and never really had any issues for which we had to intervene. I've noticed that Jamie is a bit of a sheep around other kids. I guess that's not a big deal, since most of the world needs to follow, but I worry she'll be a lemming jumping off a cliff someday. At home, I can't get Jamie to stay in any other room in this tiny little house. It's only recently she'll let me pee in peace.
We took bunches of bad pictures of our younger kids together. Katie and G2 are 5 days apart in age, and 5 pounds apart in weight (same height). Holding the two of them was an experience. G2 is so solid! Katie is such a wirey little thing, and so strong, and G2 is more like holding a weighted stuffed animal. He's much more low-key, too.
I played a little with R's dSLR and zoom lens, and now I want to move up my "new camera timetable" by about 10 years. I really liked the way the candid photos turned out with that zoom lens. I like being able to control the focus a bit better, too.
On Sunday, we headed back to the fizzled hurricane site. It only took about 6 hours this time. We didn't see much besides a couple downed trees, some larger limbs, and a lot of leaves and such. Otherwise, it was a beautiful sunny day.
The in-law's place was powerless, so we stayed at Rex's grandparent's house for the last two nights. We managed to see our unsold house, resign for 6 more months with our realtor, and visit with some close friends from the neighborhood at their new digs.
We never did get to see Rex's mother, through no fault of ours. The whole trip ended up being a logistical nightmare with some nice, relaxing time visiting friends in Dallas. I still can't say if it was a success or not, but I do know that I need a vacation from my vacation!
Posted by me at September 28, 2005 9:31 PM