Have triplets, will travel

For those of you who are new readers (or maybe you may have forgotten), allow me to explain our family to you. Rich has twelve siblings. Twelve. Because he is the third youngest, the majority of his nieces and nephews are in their twenties or early thirties. Some even have children of their own, which, yes, makes me a great aunt. (Ack!)

Our girls do have cousins close to their age on my side of the family but Rich and I also wanted that for his side of the family. We were very excited when Rich's next youngest brother married and began adding to the family. Unfortunately, Don and Amelia live in Virginia so we aren't able to visit with each other very often. The girls have only seen their cousin, Clive, who will be two in September, a handful of times. Rich and I have only seen Clive a handful of times.

The newest baby, Charlie, was born in December and we had not yet meet him in person. He was baptized at the Easter Vigil mass (think 8:00 to 10:00 PM) at a church in Georgetown (as in DC.) We wanted to attend but there was just no way that it would work for us logistically, never mind timing with work.

Rich and I thought about a good time to visit and decided on Memorial Day weekend because we both have a day off from work and we would only have to take one vacation day. The difficult part was finding time the week before to pack so that we could hit the road first thing Saturday morning. We were running around the weekend before and I kept distracting myself with other things because, really, who likes packing?

The girls were so excited for this mini vacation that they voluntarily asked to skip story time and go straight to bed Friday night so that they would be well rested for the long haul. Everything was going as planned (almost) until I shut the window in Allie's room around 9:45 PM. A few minutes after I tip-toed out of her room, I heard her whimpering and thrashing in her sleep.

(Random picture of Allie the night before we left.)

To make a long story short, I ended up sleeping in her bed with her. She moaned, tossed, turned, whined, kicked me, rolled and whimpered until almost 3:00 in the morning, at which point I finally fell into a deep sleep until Rich shook me awake at 4:40.

I was exhausted.

We pulled out of our driveway at 5:30 that morning and wearily pulled in front of Don and Amelia's house nine and a half hours later.

So what do you do after spending that much time on the road?

You go to the playground, of course.

There is a playground complete with a sprayground located directly across the street from D & A's house. It was awesome. And the temperature was in the eighties which we haven't seen much of around here. Ah, summer.

Isn't baby Charlie a cutie?

So let's talk about sleeping arrangements. We stayed with Don and Amelia which was super convenient and more fun (in addition to saving us a boatload of $). They have a finished basement with a queen size bed. We brought two air mattresses with us. One is a double and about 6 inches tall when blown up. The other is about 18 inches tall when blown up and a single.

We placed the mattresses right next to each other about two feet from the side of the bed. Allie was assigned the taller single mattress as she is the least likely to roll out of the bed. I think Allie's sleeping problems from Friday night were anxiety related. I had been teasing the girls earlier in the week asking them who was going to sleep in Charlie's crib with him. The day before we left, Allie asked me where we would be sleeping and I told her in their basement. She didn't seem to like that answer.

That first night in Virginia, we didn't stay downstairs with the girls after we tucked them in for the night. It took them awhile to fall asleep, which was understandable, but once they fell asleep, they were out for the night.

- To be continued.