Road Trip

Ben and I were married 9 years ago today, and what was the first thing we did... Road Trip! we drove to Vernon BC then back to Banff AB, one last stop in Edmonton and then the 12 hour journey to Boissevain, that we are now so familiar with.  In our 4 1/2 years without children we ventured all over the place: Tofino, Minneapolis, Thunder Bay, numerous trips to Edmonton and back and forth from Gretna to the farm (often leaving at 1am).  We averaged 40,000kms a year, then we had Reid. He fit right into our driving lifestyle, on our first trip to Edmonton he slept most of the trip (that was the most he'd slept at oncein his life),  Dex has also handled car rides like a pro.  The two of them give us a running commentary of all the trucks,tractor, trains, motorcycle etc that they see ( imagine 12 hours of "a train, i see a train"  "a bridge, mommy look a bridge"  each time with delight and wonder in their voices.  They nap, play with cars and trucks, and listen to stories on tape, but lets be honest 8 hours into the trip the DVD player comes out.  Zane, so far is a whole other story, he naps for 30mins, then will allow himself to be entertained for 10-15mins then screams, (or poops),  only to be calmed down by me singing "skina-ma-rinky-dink-dink, sikna-ma-rinky do, i love you" over and over and over...
This last weekend we headed to Edmonton for a whirlwind weekend to celebrate my parents 35th anniversary.  At one point on the way home, Zane had been crying for aloooong time and Dex asked me for something that I couldn't deliver and he started crying, it was more than I could take so I plugged my ears and looked outside and cried as well,  after a few minutes I pulled myself together took off my seat belt to go hunting for Dex's missing water bottle and started a new round of skina-ma-rinky....
In Saskatoon we took a chance and bought a soother for Zane and just like that quiet...

look mommy a train a train!!

I love driving the prairies in July, everything is so colourful and lush looking,  I no longer ask Ben "what crop is that?" because I know most of them now.  I now know to keep an eye on the road because likely Ben is watching crops more than he is watching the road. Road trips will always be apart of our life so:

  Thank you to my in-laws who bought us a DVD player even though we didn't think we needed one,  thank you town of Carlyle SK for having a Dairy Queen,  thank you Robert Munch for being really funny on CD, thank you Dole for inventing squeeze fruit and thank you farmers for keeping some bushes at the side of the road.