We Made It, Sort Of

We are here. We survived the seventeen hour trip to Florida - we did break it up in 2 days though. Six hours of driving on Thursday landed us at Kirk's neice's house in NC - we left at 10 on Friday and made it to my parents house at 9.

It was a LONG trip and I don't recommend it though I was grateful we just had the girls and that Kaitlyn and Caleb were already here.

So, from experience here's How To Travel With Triplets:

1. Don't do it unless you have to.

2. If you've ignored step 1 and must go on a trip pack and plan carefully. This takes a long time or in my case just grab everything the babies like and throw it in the van - sort it out later.

3. Getting out the door will take 3 times longer than usual as all 3 babies will be crying and difficult before you go and one will probably be sick.

4. Don't expect the babies to nap in the van - they don't and they won't. Twenty minutes at best - both days no matter how awake and/or tired they were. We didn't get one solid hour of any of them asleep the entire 17 hours - even when we traveled after dark someone would wake up every few minutes and fuss. Thus the reason I will not try and travel this route at night.

5. DO NOT stop at Hardees to eat - ever. They have a maximum of 2 high chairs and no changing table. So, here we are stuck at Hardees for dinner after swearing it off after lunch and Julianna has pooped through everything - her pants, her shirt, her toys, the carseat - covered. And there's no changing table!! So, put two chairs together, laid a pad down and changed her in the "dining" area. This was somewhere in Florida - you definitely don't want to go there :) After that it was Rachel's turn. Only Alyssa made it to Florida in her original outfit. Nice. This goes for mom's of singletons too - seriously, they need a changing table!!

6. Ignore crying. There's nothing you can do anyway so pretend it doesn't exist. It's about all that worked for me after toys, wagon wheels, bottles and animal crackers had all been exhausted. Turn the music up so you can sing to it and drown them out - occasionally this helps with the actual crying :)

7. Rotate carseats - it didn't work extremely great but I think they enjoyed being in different positions occasionally - it gets boring back there!!

8. Praise God when you make it to wherever you are going. It's nothing short of a miracle and be prepared to be completely wiped out and for me the realization struck that life is certainly much harder with triplets plus 2! I'd forgotten how much those 2 can talk :)

9. Expect the babies to be completely off schedule and miserable after you think you're settled in. All three have been nothing shy of difficult today! Doesn't help that 2 of them have the fever that Julianna had on Wednesday. Go figure.

All that being said we are grateful that we did make it here in one piece with no major disasters other than the Hardees one. Keep checking back for pictures in the coming week. We have plans to take the older 2 to Disney - yea, in this heat.