The kids and I (Jason had to work) went to Utah for the 4th of July. We hadn't been in almost a year. Dane had never been in the car for more than 20 minutes (from one side of Highlands Ranch to the other) and had never slept or napped in a place other than his crib. So needless to say I knew this was going to throw him through a loop. But I knew it would also be good for him. We did a "trial" run 2 weeks before we left for Utah and took a day trip up to Rocky Mountain National Park - 2 hours away. Dane screamed the whole way there and the whole way home. WE were all pretty defeated and just imagined doing that for 7 hours straight.
We left Saturday and Dane went right to sleep. It was supposed to take us 7 hours becasue we were staying the night in Mapleton at Jason's parents house. I knew it would take longer. I was hoping for 8 or 9. But I had NEVER traveled this far with a baby so I really had no idea. Dane slept for about 30 minutes until we hit traffic - but was happily in his car seat until we hit Veil - we stopped in Veil for dinner and to nurse. Veil should have taken us 2 hours but because of traffic it had taken 3. We were all so thrilled with Dane. we couldn't believe he had been so good for 3 hours! We were feeling good about life, and then...
We got back in the car and he screamed from Veil to Mapleton. That would normally be a 5 hour drive - but we stopped, seriously, at every town trying to calm him down. Nothing worked. At 10 o'clock I called Jason from Green River telling him I wasn't above calling it quits and getting a hotel room. Fortunately his screaming made my blood boil and I was quite on edge, so I wasn't at all tired. We rolled into Mapleton about midnight. It took just under 11 hours and he cried for 8 of them. It was intense. We DID find out that he would be quiet for a little bit if we BLASTED some songs that Jason normally sings to him with a strong base line (If Praying Were Horses and Bound for the Promise Land). We listened to them on repeat for about 2 hours straight.
The BEST part though was the kids. Talk about selflessness, long suffering and love unfeigned. They weren't upset that he was screaming - they only cared about how to help him. They worked together, got creative and switched seats a lot so that they could all take turns trying to help him. Not ONCE did someone complain about the crying. It was amazing. THIS is one of the reasons I wanted to have more babies - to teach these qualities to my kids. There are some qualities best taught in home and family. And these are they.
Just so it's not all about Dane. I also want to documents some other pretty cool things about our driving. 1) The Bishop challenged the young men to memorize The Proclamation over the summer. Brock hadn't really started so we listened to it over and over again while driving. We all now have the first 2 paragraphs memorized. 2) I was wondering how we were going to do Come Follow Me while on vacation. Would we just skip? Should I try to do it everyday? I didn't know. We had a lot of time in the car - not just the ride there and back but also all of our adventures. I would put on a chapter and we would listen to it and talk about it in the car. It was perfect. I think it was one of our best weeks ever of CFM.
Here we are on one of our pit stops.
It really took us all 10 days of our trip to be emotionally ready for the trip back home. But amazingly he was wonderful! He slept a ton and when he was awake he was happy! It was delightful. The 7 hour drive took us 9 hours. We stopped twice for an hour each to nurse Dane and let him have a break. Stay tuned for (hopefully) a post a day on our Utah trip. There are about 12 posts.
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