Part two: Get me to the conference on time

I’m trying to think of an appropriate beginning to this post and all I get cycling through my mind is Donkey singing “On the road again…I can’t wait to get on the road again.”

“What did I say about singing?”

“Well can I whistle?”

“No!”

“well can I humm?”

“Alright.”

“hmmm hm hm hm hm hm hmmm”

Shut up donkey I’m trying to type a blog post. The drive from the Sydney region to the Gold Coast is a long one, we have done it before in one day but we started at 5:00am and got there at dinner time. This time we left our house at 10:30am but what with dropping the dogs off at Mum and Dad’s we didn’t truly get started till 11:00, a bit of a scary prospect when Glenn had to be at the conference at 8:30am the next day.

The kids were great I think it helped that Glenn loves driving so we have spent many Sunday afternoons driving through the countryside. Also since starting homeschooling I have been slightly more organized so all of their activity books and reading books were in places I could quickly grab them from. All the pencils and textas are kept in clear Decor storage containers so they were easy to grab too. The main problem was other than the kids little ones we didn’t have a suitcase so everything we took with us had to be carried in green shopping bags so our car had a slightly crazy cat lady look to it.

Every time we stopped for anything I had a frantic we-have-to-get-going feeling rush through me. The whole thing was slightly mad and I have a new appreciation for long haul truck drivers that spend their lives doing journeys like this under tight schedules.

We did have one unplanned stop when we had to pull over to let a bridge pass but that was pretty cool so I didn’t stress too much. Besides we were stopped next to a sign for Bulahdelah. We knew some tourists that rang from the road once from there, only they pronounced it “Bull arr dl a” so while we were waiting Glenn and I sang “Bull arr dl a doo do d do do Bull ar dl a do do do dooo” and the kids looked at us like we were mad.

Most of the first half of the trip was taken up with Eli asking questions like:

“So why are we in the car?”

I thought maybe the poor kids needed a little help getting a grip on the situation seeing that it was somewhat thrust apon them. I gave them a run down on our quickly arranged plans for the week involving a couple of trips to the beach a visit to Currumbin animal sanctuary and dinner with Glenn’s Dad who lives close to where we would be staying. This seamed to stop the questions for a while. till Lilly pipped up with:

“I know what we are doing today, we are driving to the beach then we will see the animals and have dinner with poppy and this afternoon we will go home” (it was already 4:00pm)

I re-explained making sure I put in words like Holiday Apartments and staying over night and then the next night and then the next night…..

Oh by the way babies are no bother on long trips and you don’t need to pack toys for them either. This one entertained herself for hours with an empty plastic cup.

She did scream hysterically when the sun went down, she has always panicked in the car after dark. Luckily Glenn had the foresight to stick the portable DVD player on charge before we started packing. And after I remembered we had it with us and turned it on it had enough juice to play three episodes of Pigglywinks which calmed her down enough to let her drift of to sleep.

The others nodded off soon after except for Lilly who stayed up chatting with us for the rest of the trip, she was quite disappointed that the Big Banana was too dark to see.

After a mammoth 11 and a half hours driving we got there around 10:30pm. The kids were so adorably squidgy and confused when we got them out of the car.

Only Lilly was really still with us and after indulging her curiosity enough to stick her head in every door cupboard and cabinet in the place she came up to me and asked:

“So when will they be getting back?”

“Who Honey?”

“The people who own this house”