So long Arkansas, Hello Ohio is part 1 in a 3 part series titled Holiday Adventures describing my adventures over the holidays.

So Christmas came and went with out so much as a whimper, with lots of great gifts to be given and received by all.  Arriving home from the inlaws house around 4pm, we had 6 hours give or take to pack and get the car ready for Ohio.  Unfortunately, like most things in my life, Murphy’s law is in full effect.  Nothing got packed until the morning we are to depart.  No big deal, we still got out of town by 7 am.

Driving straight to Dayton is about a 11 hour drive on a good day — e.g. no children, frequent pit-stops, etc.  With kids and stops, this can easily turn into a 12 hour plus drive.  Ours, thankfully fell somewhere in the middle, around 11.75 hours — not too bad, but a tad too long in my opinion.  Anyway, we make it to our motel in Dayton around 9:00 pm and get our room.  Normally, we would go to Dad’s first and get settled in, but we were meeting a friend and wanted to visit with her before settling in and doing the family thing.  The idea was for the kids to go to bed and for me and Liz to mosey over to her room (she was staying nearby) and catch up on old times, etc.  Of course the kids were having none of it.  Chloe didn’t want to sleep and Hunter decided he wanted to stay up and watch TV.

Finally, the crotch spawn children went to sleep (around 10:45 mind you) and we went over to our friends room and hung out.  Evidently, around 2:30am, Hunter woke up and freaked out because he couldn’t find us (we forgot to tell him where we would be) and went outside to look for us.  I heard the door open and close and rushed out to find Hunter traumatized.  So I took him back to our room, told him to chill for 3 minutes, ran to our friends room and gathered Liz and said our goodbyes.  30 minutes after finding Hunter outside, we got him calmed down and back in bed.  As it was now 3am, we decided to go to bed ourselves.

Waking up at the ripe hour of 9am, we packed the car up and drove the short drive to Dads house where we were greeted by Beth and an army of small fuzzy rat looking things dogs.  We all moved into the living room where we were told that we would be staying at my step-brother Jon’s house for the week — which I thought was pretty cool.  The downside was that we had to wait until almost 5pm for Jon to get off work and meet us at Dads, let alone get ready and take us over to the house so we could get settled in….and I still had to have a meeting with my client that evening!

Arriving at Jon’s around 7:30, we quickly got the 5 minute tour and visited with Jon for a few minutes.  Having to go to my client’s office and take schematics of a network move and discuss the week’s projects before 10pm made for a quick stay before we were all in the car again.

Stay tuned for part 2 of my Holiday Adventure as I deal with dust bunnies larger than a cat and an earsplitting, blood curdling, ultra-mobile 10 month old and confined spaces!