Epic October

Dear October,

You were one crazy month and are making me write a very long blog entry. I blame you if people die before they get to the end of this.

October started out like any other month. Except busier.

There were a few Etsy orders to fill, Chelsea’s baby shower, Katie visiting, and, oh yeah, a 4500-mile road trip to prepare for.

Luckily I have some very talented and understanding sisters who did all the planning and preparation for Chelsea’s baby shower. All I did was show up with purchased éclairs and cream puffs, a gift, and had a great time.

I had my camera in my bag expecting to catch some great pictures of the girls’ night sushi dinner to celebrate Katie’s visit and forgot to take a single picture. Not very like me. It was so fun to have all the Richards girls (we missed you Darcy [insert sad face here]) around talking about stuff and eating, things we do very well. It was Aubrey and Olivia’s first sushi and they both mastered chopsticks by the end of the night.

So about that 4500-mile road trip? I’ll start from the top. See, we bought a little franchise called Fibrenew. Part of our contract of ownership is that we must attend one local franchisee convention every other year and the international franchisee convention every three years. So it goes one-year local convention, then the next year nothing, then the next year international convention. Do you remember in 2008 the local convention was in Las Vegas and how much I wanted to go to that? Last year was the "off" year making 2010 the year for the international convention.

We got the email announcing the location of this year’s convention in April. Orlando, Florida at the Walt Disney World Resort. Swell. Just swell. Why not Egypt guys? Our first thought was we would fly Olen there for the three days of classes and elbow-rubbing and then he would fly home enriched and fired up to make the business boom. But then we (by we I mean Olen) started crunching some numbers and decided that it really wouldn’t cost too much more to toss in me and the three kids and make it a road trip to remember. Plus the convention fell right on Olen’s birthday and Daisy’s 1st birthday.

The franchise had put together classes for the owners to attend all about new marketing strategies, new products being introduced, and question and answer sessions. Sprinkled in between the classes was to be a meet and greet dinner on the beach of the resort with other franchise owners, a lunch with some Disney characters, a $25 Disney dining card and one park admission ticket, a plated banquet dinner and a dessert buffet on a reserved island at the Epcot Center followed by fireworks. Your first thought is, “Wow, what a generous franchise! Where do I sign up?” But then you remember that over the course of April to August the franchise was making withdrawals from your checking account to pay for your registration fee that paid for all of the above. And then your second thought is, “Wow, I am so generous! Why couldn’t we do this at the Holiday Inn?”

If you’re my friend on Facebook (and if you’re not, why the heck aren’t you?? ) you might have seen the pictures I posted from our trip already. Well, you lucky ducks get the full story here. So since the convention was being held at the Walt Disney World Resort we had to stay at that resort. We did get the company rate, which cut the bill in half, thank goodness since it wasn’t part of the registration fee. See, on Facebook, I didn’t mention that part. After staying at the resort Olen and I decided, even though it costs about double (maybe triple, I don’t know) than the hotels two miles away, the perks are worth paying for, especially when you’re only planning on a couple days at one of the parks. Traveling all that way, why not stay in style for a few more dollars? Although before our resort experience, if we weren’t required to stay there, we would have been booked at the nearest $99 a night motel.

As a guest of the resort, you can stay later after the park closes; they have a bus and a ferry boat that takes you to and from the park, and you are able to go to any other resort and play on their stuff or in their pools or check out the lobbies. Oh, my gosh! The lobbies! Think Titanic, they are that beautiful.

So now that the last registration payment had been made and there was no turning back we had to decide how we were going to get there. Fly or drive? Fly or drive? My family knows we went back and forth on this for months. At first, it was drive, and then we decided we were crazy and should fly, and then we decided we are already crazy so why not drive. Thankfully some of our best friends had just moved to Houston, which is conveniently halfway to Orlando, and offered to let us stay with them for a night. This was wonderful and allowed us to zip from Mesa to Houston then rest, shower, and play, and zip from Houston to Orlando. We did the same route on the way home, too. Breaking the drive up into these four legs helped the kids forget just how long we were inside the rental van.

Speaking of the rental van, it was simply heaven on four wheels. It was a brand new Chrysler and I fell in love. We borrowed Haskel’s hard-top luggage carrier and filled that full with all our clothes and anything we wouldn’t need on the road, then filled the under storage compartments with all our traveling supplies (extra diapers, wipes, formula, bottles, food, blankets, and pillows) and in the back it had enough cargo storage to hold our ice chest and a 20-gallon container of dry food plus Daisy’s stroller and more blankets and pillows. When we got home and unloaded the van Olen kept filling the family room with more and more things, clown-car fashion. We both kept saying how we didn’t even know we brought all this stuff because the passenger areas were only packed with the basic essentials like a few pillows and the treasure box my mom and dad gave us. That treasure box saved the day. Mom and dad packed it full of puzzle books, coloring books, toys for Daisy, cool games, and every other thing kids love. With all forces combined, it was a very smooth ride.

Since I’m a Listaholic I started charting out packing supplies, what each person would wear to each different event and what things were necessary for the survival of our sanity while in the car for 36 hours. I made some special shirts for Porter and me and got the cutest tutus from my friend September for the girls to wear when/if we met some Princesses along the way. I thought about every scenario and then packed for it. This drives Olen crazy. He’s what I would call a spontaneous planner. He plots out the plan but then goes the rest of the way by the seat of his pants. This drives me crazy. I have to have an outline for a plan followed by an outline for a plan B, should the first plan change. And can I just say, that not one thing went unused? The little baggie of laundry soap came in really handy the night I had to use the resort’s coin washer and dryer because London got chocolate ice cream on her Tinkerbell shirt when she wore it to the park on Friday but I planned on her wearing it to the character luncheon on Saturday and needed it clean. The spray bottle and starch got used when we ironed the dress shirts for the dessert party. All the food I packed didn’t get eaten but having a variety to choose from kept everyone happy. I wore every single one of the six pairs of shoes I packed for myself, with their coordinating outfits. And I’m very glad that I packed two outfits for the “semi-formal” dinner because even though the black dress I wore to dinner was “stunning” (Olen’s word, not mine) almost all the other women were in dress slacks and jackets. So after dinner, I dashed back to our room and changed for the dessert and fireworks show. Not one thing did we forget nor wish he hadn’t brought. Thank you, yes, applause is perfectly acceptable.

Now comes the part of the show where we play the pictures.

At Chelsea's baby shower.

What a very adorable onesie, if I do say so myself.

Uncle Mitch gets some daddy practice by playing airplane with Daisy.

Daisy thinks he's going to do just fine.

 

Being with my little sister for the last time before she becomes a mom.

I am so happy for her and so proud of her. 

We left on October 11th, that was a Monday. Of course, we wanted to leave in the morning but didn't get all packed and on the road till late afternoon. Olen drove the whole way until 5am the next morning when I took over for a few hours. Olen tried to sleep but with every slight drift of the wheel, he would jump awake and ask if I was doing all right. I banished him to the back seat by Porter so he could sleep and (mostly) I could drive in peace. That was the one and only time the whole 4500 miles that I drove.

The DVD Player of Sanity. We leap-frogged to Red Boxes along the way and picked up or dropped off movies as we went. Those things are genius!

After my turn at the wheel, we pit-stopped in San Antonio, TX because they had such neat parks with tons of green grass. We grabbed a bucket of KFC around 10:30 and had a little picnic here. It was the first time the kids really got to run around since leaving Mesa the afternoon before.

Eight years ago Olen was on a business trip in New Mexico and ate at a little bar-b-que place called Rudy's. He's been craving it ever since but the only Rudy's are mostly in Texas and New Mexico with one in Colorado and Oklahoma, I think. I almost wonder if this is why Olen wanted to drive so badly, so we could stop at every Rudy's in Texas. We looked up all the Rudy's on our route and stopped there for more pulled pork and smoked-baked potatoes as we went through. We're driving to Ft. Collins, Colorado for Thanksgiving at Chris and Katie's house in a couple weeks and have our route planned around eating at the Rudy's in Albuquerque by dinner time.

This is us eating at the Houston Rudy's with our great friends, the Aldriches. I wish we lived next door again and not 18 hours apart. I think this might be the first of many road trips to Houston to visit the Aldriches and Rudy's.

The convention ran from Thursday to Saturday, October 14 to 16th.

The first night was an opening social on the beaches in the center of the resorts. Every time we ate it was catered by the Disney people and I loved that I wasn't the one wearing the white tuxedo shirt. It was wonderful to sit and watch the servers dash around and clear tables.

On Friday morning Olen attended the classes while I packed the stroller and dressed the kids for our day at the Magic Kingdom. We had a little patio outside our bedroom at the resort that opened to this grassy area and pond the kids played around while I organized the room. Everything about Florida was so green and wet, it was totally foreign to my dry desert kids.

Waiting at the resort bus stop to catch a ride to the park. Our hotel room had a back porch that led down a grassy hill to a beautiful pond below. I made the kids stay at the top of the hill because I was worried about alligators. Hey, it's Florida!

I love this big "P" shirt I made for Porter.

I dressed the girls in their Tinkerbell and Snow White outfits hoping for some good photo ops, but we didn't see a single Disney character the whole day. We saw a few on Saturday and turns out London thought they were all "phonies" and Daisy was totally freaked out by the big gloves they all wear so looking back it's probably better we didn't wait in any lines for that.

We're wearing buttons that say First Time Visitor and Olen and Daisy had buttons that said Birthday Kid.

Daisy could come on quite a bit of rides with us. It's A Small World was closed and that was a major let-down, but she loved any chance to ride like the big kids. Olen and I took turns going on rides with Porter and London or hanging out with Daisy in the stroller people watching.

Saturday Olen had classes all day with a lunch break in between for the whole family. We were warned there might be a visit from some familiar faces.

Every character tried to get the kids happy and all together but London was too busy being mad that Mickey wasn't "the real one" (maybe she was expecting a cartoon?) and Daisy thought she was abducted by Disney aliens. She never cried, but couldn't stop staring at their oversized gloved hands. With Porter being the backbone of every picture they pretty much sum up the personalities of our kids.

Bless Porter's heart. He tried to help Daisy understand how cool it was to meet a real-life Donald Duck, but she could not be convinced.

After the luncheon, Olen had to go back to the owner's classes so before the kids and I headed to the swimming pool I took the opportunity to catch some more pictures of my cuties on the front deck of the resort.

If given the choice between going back to the Magic Kingdom or spending a whole day at the pools of the resort I almost wonder if my kids would have chosen the pools. The weather was beautiful, the water was warm and we had all day.

The little boy next to Porter (picture below) just came up and asked him if he could help build the sandcastle. Porter found me with his eyes and gave me a little shoulder shrug and a look that he does when something cool happens without him even trying.

Now London did not think her new friend was so cool.

See the little boy in green following her? His name was Ryan: "My name is Ryan, Ryan Cook. Want to be friends? Let's play!"

He just came up to London in the pool and never left. London didn't have time to bother with a polite decline. She looks at me, looks at him, crinkles her nose, and says she will not be his friend and he should go away. I was embarrassed because his mother was not far and I tried to correct London and help her be polite, but you know London, she had said her piece and that was that. She did her best to ignore him and he did his best to never go away.

She was never mean, but she did start to get really frustrated with him. Poor, poor Ryan. I couldn't help but feel sorry for him, and at the same time smuggle a laugh for my sassy girl. I think boys wanting to follow her around is something she's going to have to get used to.

I thought Daisy would love to play in the sand since she loves dirt and mud, but she hated it! She and I ended up hanging out on the chairs or being a buffer between London and her little "friend". 

I was almost too preoccupied watching the servers deliver food and clear plates to enjoy the plated dinner on Saturday night, but I managed. The food was delicious and I drank all the Sprite with cranberry juice I wanted from the open bar.  

I took this picture with my cell phone and got a weird look from someone coming into the restroom. I had to take a picture though! Every public restroom at the resort had cloth hand towels. No paper for Disney, thank you very much.

The closing ceremonies was held at the Epcot Center. Fibrenew (via registration fees, eh-hem) reserved an island veranda over the water for desserts and coffee during the night's fireworks show. The view really couldn't have been better and the kids loved it. Since it was Daisy's and Olen's birthday we tried to squeeze in some birthday cake, but Daisy wasn't in the mood. It had been a very busy day, so I really couldn't blame her. Plus it made for some good pictures trying to force-feed our one-year-old a cupcake.

There were other families at the convention, but we kept mostly to ourselves and pretended like we were just like any other normal family who goes to the Epcot Center in jackets and ties.

I've seen some pretty amazing fireworks shows in my life, but I gotta give it to Disney, these were pretty awesome.

We packed it all up and hit the road Sunday morning headed back to Houston, Texas, and our sweet friends at their "halfway house" home.

About three hours into the drive homeward we started seeing roadside signs for boiled peanuts. I've only heard my girl Paula Deen talk about boiled peanuts and if they are good enough for Ms. Deen, then they were good enough for us. This good ol' boy sold two kinds, salted and Cajun. We got a pint of each for ten bucks. He told me they take seven hours to boil and he's been making them his whole life.

The kids loved them, especially Daisy because they required very little chewing. The peanut was soft like a boiled pinto bean and shared the same flavor, too. Porter said we were just like Bizarre Foods eating the local fare. Maybe we have seen a bit too much Food Network?

The kids traveled so well. See the treasure box from Nana and Papa down there? I think that's what saved us all. Well, and the rented mini-van that won my heart.

London fell in love with this "shade hat" that I packed for Daisy. She wore it over her face as if the sun was shining on her side of the car. One time she fell asleep and I didn't even know it, I thought she was still hiding from the sun.

I took this picture while Porter and London were both asleep. Daisy is eating a smoked sausage link from one of our many Rudy's stops like a big kid with mom and dad. This girl is a meat-eater!

Besides this Hogly Wogly gas stations they still have a ton of Piggly Wiggly grocery stores. They're really nice, too. We stopped at one in Louisiana to use the Red Box.

The marathon driver. I don't know how he does it.

I don't want to make all you ladies jealous, but Olen is rubbing my feet right here. My bad leg veins got so sore from sitting on the long drive so Olen would rub my feet while I read out loud and the kids watched a movie in the way back of the minivan. I mentioned heaven on four wheels, right?

On Facebook, I said something like "Forever shotgun" as a caption for this picture. That is a private joke between me and Olen because he only let me drive one time to San Antonio. He was afraid of getting an inter-state speeding ticket or something. As if! But jokes on him because I didn't want to drive anyways.

I loved seeing the sun set in the different states. This is one as we left Louisiana.

This is what Mandy (the voice on the GPS) told us as we left Houston for Mesa.

"Home is only 17 hours away!"

When bickering would break out we got creative. We tried to help Porter see things from London's paradigm of being buckled into a car seat for about 80% of the journey hoping he would be more willing to hand her the crayons or toy she dropped. But the buckles wouldn't fit and I couldn't stop laughing so I had to take a picture while Porter ignored me and ate his pulled pork sandwich. You can't see it, but London is in the back seat squealing with joy.

London has a tender tummy and is very sensitive to motion sickness so she had to pop a Dramamine every twelve hours if we were on the road. Even though she got really good at it and faster each time, she still made the funniest faces as she tried to get that bitter pill to go down.

This happened quite a bit on the whole 36-hour drive. Porter would wake up because he was uncomfortable and London would wake up because her bed was moving.

Believe it or not, I was just coming back to my seat from changing Daisy and I lifted the camera to the rearview mirror and snapped this picture. It's one of my favorites because to me it really could say 1000 words. Olen started to panic because we were near the border-crossing entering southern Arizona and I should have been in my seat.

Here's a funny story: When we crossed the border the first time it was like 1:00 am and I was passed out in my shotgun seat. I woke up when Olen stopped the car under the bright lights of the crossing inspection station and sat up. The guard shined his light inside our van at the sleeping kids and then at me and nodded to Olen and asks him if I am an American citizen! Me! I was groggy and had a kink in my neck but I was awake enough to be like "What??"

I should have said "Que?"

The day after we got home it was back to life as usual. Olen had appointments booked, I had a mountain of laundry and Porter went off to school. All day if I closed my eyes and stood still the ground felt like it was moving me down the blacktop of the I-10. Olen and I both expressed how we felt homesick from the minivan and being together with nothing we had to do but be together. We decided that out of all the amazing and wonderful experiences we had along the way, just getting there and coming home were our favorites.