Adventures in Thanksgiving Travels

This past weekend we went to visit some of my family in southwest Virginia for Thanksgiving.  I love going down to visit everyone and have been making the trip pretty much my whole life (either from Virginia to Maryland or Maryland to Virginia depending on where I lived at the time).  It is 5 hours or so each way and after awhile you get used to it.  However, the trip is a little different than it was before I had a family of my own to travel with.


We took our four-door Silverado because its the only thing we own thats actually big enough for us to travel in.  So, in the front seat its me and my husband.  Between us and in the floor, we have stuff cramed into every bit of open space:  snacks and diapers and cameras and everything that can't go in the bed of the truck.  We do manage to leave just enough space for my feet.  In the back seat we have our two kids in their carseats, our bassett hound, and our big mutt/hound dog.  Its a full truck!!  Luckily, we have a nice large bed for all the luggage.  Oh, and this time we decided to bring home another chicken from my parents farm, so we had a chicken in a box in the back with our luggage (because we didn't look Beverly Hillbilly enough with the loaded down truck). 


Now, traveling with dogs does have its obvious down side, like having to walk them, get them water, and stuff.  But, add to that the fact that everytime we visit the farm they roll in every dead animal they can find before they get in the truck to come home.  So, we had the pleasure of smelling their nasty, dead animal scent the entire confined trip.


Because it was the Sunday after Thanksgiving we, of coarse, hit stop and go traffic several times.  And, if you've traveled with children, you know that everytime you stop the baby cries.  And everytime the baby cried the 2 year old grabs her or pokes her.  And everytime she falls back asleep, the two year old grabs her or pokes her until she cries again.


Finally, we were about 25 minutes or so from home and we got pulled over for only having running lights on (my husband turned the lights down at a traffic light we had just stopped at because they were going straight into the little car in front of us and he didn't turn them on afterwards).  So the cop walks over and comes to the window.  That made the dogs start barking like crazy, which scared the crap out of the sleeping children so they woke up screaming and crying.  The officer is trying to talk to us, but all we hear is screaming and barking.  The dogs are jumping over the baby trying to get to the cop so she is screaming louder.  I'm turned around trying to get her pacifier in her mouth so she can calm down and am trying to keep the dogs off of her.  Russ got excited when he realized what was going on and just started yelling police car, police car! 


I think they felt sorry for us, so they quickly sent us on our way.


Can't wait to make the trip again next year!!