Fourth of July Adventures

We went to Caseville for the Fourth of July. Packing always takes a long time so we didn’t leave until about 5pm on Thursday, later than we wanted! We planned to eat dinner in Lapeer but there was an 8 car accident including a smashed or (“mashed” as Braden says) state police car. That had traffic slowed for a very long time. Then we hit one lane construction so we didn’t get to dinner until 7:30pm. The kids were very hungry and restless during the ride but they behaved extremely well in the restaurant and were in great moods when we left.

Addie consumed a lot more water than I realized. We had already stopped in Brighton in the Costco parking lot to use the plastic potty and then went potty again at the restaurant. I thought we might be ok to make it Caseville but no, while on a two lane road before Caro, Addie yells stop pee pee coming and she was adamant we stop. We pulled over to an empty building that was for lease, figured it’d be fine, it was vacant. As I’m getting the potty set up outside the car both kids are yelling about something walking around. I ignore them since I’m trying to get stuff done and then Brian says oh my gosh, they are right and I look up and two peacocks come very close to our “potty.” Brian tells me that he thinks peacocks can be mean. I tell him who cares, she has to go so both kids end up going potty while the peacocks walk around in circles looking at us. At one point the male flies up on the roof of the building to show off. I really didn’t even know they could fly. Addie didn’t want to leave, she wanted to kiss the peacocks.

We got back in the car and decided to put a video on since it was close to 9pm and maybe they’d sleep. No such luck they didn’t sleep, we were 15 minutes from the cottage and Addie has to go pee AGAIN. We tell her she has to wait but every minute she yells again, stop the car, pee pee coming. I tell him we have to stop, I’m not taking apart the carseat and washing it, it takes an engineer to figure it out! So Brian turns onto the next street and remembers there is a golf course right nearby. We pull into the entrance and get out the plastic potty and put it in front of our car shining the headlights on Addie so she wouldn’t be scared of the dark. She is sitting on the potty taking forever when just our luck a cop pulls in to see what we are doing. He must have realized that it was innocent, just a sweet two year old sitting on the potty at 10pm in the middle of nowhere. He said hi and went on his way, thankfully it’s not against the law for a toddler to pee in public!

We arrived at the cottage about 10:30pm, 5 hours and 4 potty breaks after we left home. Not sure we will be doing much traveling after this trip if a 2.5 hour trip takes twice as long. We might as well plan for an 8 hour trip to get to Torch Lake and at least 8 potty breaks. I really thought getting rid of diapers would make my life easier but in many ways that is not the case!
The kids finally got into bed close to midnight by the time we unpacked and made up the beds, etc. This was their first time sleeping in the same room together. It took them 30 minutes to stop laughing but they did finally fall asleep at 12:30pm.