Holidays are supposed to be happy...

We did 2 Thanksgivings this year, one on Thursday with my father and some family from the Valley, and one on Friday with my inlaws.

Luckily, Dad lives about 4 miles away and the drive is a piece of cake so that was nice. Still, the house was full and with my grandmother getting near to 90 yrs old, it fell to me to be the hostess. It was really light as far as Thanksgivings go b/c my father picked up the whole dinner from HEB and all I had to do was heat everything up and put it on the table then clean up afterwards, but still. I'm lazy and still had Brent and Gigi dragging on me the entire time so it was tiring.

The trip to the inlaws is only slighter farther, about an hour and a half, and my MIL does all the hard work, but egad, that drive. Travelling with an infant is hard. Travelling with a 3 yr old is hard. Travelling with both at the same time put me in tears. Literally. After an hour straight of the baby howling, exhausting herself and falling asleep only to be immediately woken up by the boy pretending to be a TRex or a pirate because he was bored stiff, I cried the rest of the way home. Oddly enough, my tears were enough to shame the boy and he quieted down except to whisper once in a while, "Mommy sad?" I should have cried sooner.

We will do Christmas at the inlaws and I'm shamefully considering Benadrylling the boy for the drives. Then, family from Bogota is coming to visit in January and we must necessarily swallow our terror and make the 6 hr drive down to see the other nearing 90 yr old grandmother, as it will be, in all reasonableness, the last trip before she dies. That's 6 hrs without children. I think I may need Benadryl for the kids and Valium for me. Wish me luck. I wish we could afford plane tickets. It's just as nightmarish but it's over faster. Can we put the kids in UPS boxes and overnight them?