Road Trip

A few weeks ago, we took a little road trip to a city about 3 hours away where my husband was working a trade show in the area. Luckily my sister-in-law lives there with her family so we had a nice place to crash for a few days. Before when we used to travel somewhere we loved to see how fast we could get from point A to point B, now it seems like no matter how hard we try we are always leaving an hour later then planned and the trip takes three times longer then Google map says it will. Short bathroom stops turn into half an hour excursions and stopping for food takes way over an hour. Due to this me and road trips aren’t the best of friends lately. By the end of a journey everyone is a little irritable and cramped and sometimes it just doesn’t seem worth the hassle of packing up half of our belongings (since I am the worlds worst packer and tend to think on the side of more is better). One silver lining to all of it is that we have really good little travellers. The kids rarely cry in the vehicle unless they are hungry and we can usually make it a fair distance before we have to stop for a bathroom break.

 So four in a half hours later we arrived (Goggle says we should have made it in 3) hoping to spend some time with daddy while he was off at night and excited to spend time with family. Since our visit was mostly in the middle of the week we had a lot of alone time, with kids at school and people at work, and so we decided to explore the city. There is a large Outlet Mall nearby that claimed to be very family friendly so i thought i would test their claims with my two little monsters.They had a free, clean play area for the kids equipped with tons of play structures for them to play on,  a few of the stores had coloring stations and choo-choo trains set up for kids to play with while their parents shopped, but the best part of the whole mall was the mothers lounge they had in one of the bathrooms.  I love that public places are finally starting to cater more to breastfeeding moms and I no longer have to sit on a dirty floor or in a changing room to feed my son. This lounge had 6 leather recliners, soft carpet on the floor, a few toys and a TV playing cartoons. I was so impressed with it!

My kids had a blast at the mall and even meet a few friends along the way. We ended up going back to the same mall the next day because of everything it offered to keep them busy and entertained (I want to add that the temperatures outside were in the -30's which is why we were looking for anything indoors).

All in all our road trip was pretty good, we did have some low points, daddy had to work way more then we thought and having little ones in a new place that isn’t 100% baby friendly can be tough. My already poor sleepers slept horribly the whole time and on more then one occasion our Queen bed had four people sleeping in it. On the plus side my little ones loved seeing their family and had so much fun at the different play centers we went to everyday. Road trips and me still aren't on the best of terms but we are getting to be better friends.