A few months ago, we decided to take a little family vacation to Cameron and Lauren’s graduation from LSU. We rented a house, looked at things to do, planned a route, and invited all our kids, our mothers and my sister. We took off bright and early - well actually just early. The sun wasn’t up yet on Thursday morning. It is a 12 hour drive that we were hoping to make in about 14 hours.
Before we could leave, I had a few hundred things to accomplish. Things like trying to keep Mr. Mackey out of the fences. He will not stop sticking his head through the fence and then his horns get stuck. Also when Jim and I went shopping for car snacks I happened to find a huge clearance sale on a bunch of garden plants and so I had to stop everything and plant them. It seemed to be the week for insane weirdness.
Anyway, we managed to leave at o’dark thirty and met up with our travel group. My mom drove her car, mallory drove her car and we took our car. We split the girls and hit the road. We made it exactly 1 hour tonYates Center when we had to stop for a 5 year old who had soda for breakfast and now needed the bathroom! I told her she was going to throw off our 12 hour time limit. She just laughed at me.
We stopped somewhere in Oklahoma for lunch. I wanted to eat before we hit the Indian nations turnpike through Oklahoma because I recalled there is literally nothing along quite a few miles of road. I jokingly told Evie that McDonald’s was out of chicken nuggets, so I ordered her the gator instead. She gave me the look of death, and Mallory documented it for me. She does make me laugh.
We hit the road and made decent time until we hit the Louisiana border. Then it started to rain. We could not drive as fast as the speed limit said we could because it was wet. The drive from Shreveport to Baton Rouge is a little over 3 hours. Except yesterday. I don’t know how long we were out there, but it felt like 23522 hours. Made worse when it got dark. Made even worse when they kept coming in the radio to tell us that the national weather service issued a storm warning or a tornado warning for some Parish. We didn’t know what parish we were in, and we were not able to drive very fast due to than road conditions. When we were 2 hours away; we realized the Airbnb host had not contacted us regarding how to access the house. Jim was able to find contact information and we talked to the host. He informed me that the power was out, that he thought we were coming Friday, and that he had not yet cleaned the property. He suggested we get a hotel. I told him absolutely not. I already paid for this, we were coming and if the power was out, we had flashlights. He said ok then, I’ll tell my person to unlock ir for you. He also told me how to come in the back road. We finally made it to the road you turn on to our Airbnb. We had been on the road for 16.5 hours. I was more than ready to be out of the car. It was still pouring. The gps was telling me to turn, but the name of the street the guy gave me did not match the sign in the end of the road. I passed it. The gps rerouted me. Onto a minimum maintenance type field road. Nice. Just what I needed. I stopped to warn the others who were following me. And then I did something that I knew would come in handy someday when I bought my car, and I popped it into 4 wheel drive. I managed to plow my way out and get turned around. I then called the host who directed me until we managed to find our house.
I like the house just fine, but he was not kidding about not having cleaned it. And the house has a sort of weird vibe. Like a very old property. Harper is 100% convinced the house is haunted. She may be right, but I think it’s just old.
Today we needed a little time to recoup, which we took in the morning. Cameron helped me get over to Walmart where we got groceries and cleaning supplies, and brought home lunch for everyone.
Then we headed out for the Baton Rouge zoo. We saw a lot of stuff and enjoyed an afternoon there.
We returned to the house and made a nice dinner and hung out visiting. It was nice day and I am glad we had a little bit of downtime.
Cameron gave Evie a can of air. She very sweetly told her mother “mommy I love you!” When Madison bent down to hug her, she squirted her in the face with canned air! Little turkey.
Colin’s flight got delayed, which means he missed his connecting flight. He is stuck in Dallas and will fly in tomorrow. Cameron is currently at the airport picking up aunt Amy. Tomorrow is graduation day! We are so proud of these kids! (Photos from the graduate’s photo day at the stadium at the top).
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