Every good road trip starts in a drive thru around the corner from our house

The road trip that got me to the site of my recent half marathon was another in the long line of carefully orchestrated productions in my world.  As do all of our road trips, it began in a drive thru 5 minutes after we got on the road. 

Arby's.  Selected based on the curliness of their fries. Naturally.

We’re the only people I know that can’t successfully leave the city limits without already requiring snacks.  And, on top of that, we like to further maximize our departure delay by actually debating the correct drive through to hit.
 

Our drive was a mere 3 hours.   We’ve been known to successfully double our estimated travel time but not this time.  Mostly because we had to get to packet pickup.  Despite that, we managed to find time for donuts, french fries, coffee and soda, soda and more soda.  We also successfully spilled lemonade on the back seat of our relatively new car.

My kids were eager to arrive at the race location, too.  Not because they cared about my date with destiny at the half marathon but because my crazy brother lives in that vicinity and we were going to let them run roughshod over him and trash his apartment.  

He joined us to carb load the night before the race. 

Duck face while being swarmed.

The only thing funnier than being the idiots wearing matching tie dyed shirts everywhere is eating dinner with someone that's not wearing one and everyone else keeps asking where his shirt is. 

Note to self: Subject extended family to the matchy matchy shirts, too.

The kids slept over at my brother's place and my husband tried hard to scare them straight before we headed out.

Pretending to listen to their father.

Did I mention he attempted to give the scared straight lecture while laying on the floor with his head on a princess pillow? Classic.

I'm sure all hell broke loose as soon as we left.  Their adventures included falling into a creek, shopping for candy and throwing playing cards everywhere.  They also hit a botanical garden and bought new tennis shoes for everyone after realizing the “falling into a creek” operation left them with wet shoes. 

I particularly enjoyed when they called me on the phone to ask where I packed their extra shoes.  Right.  Because everyone packs their kids several pairs of shoes just to go out of town for 48 hours.  Not to mention they had one very small overnight bag and had gone through it and still thought I’d have extra shoes hidden away in some Mary Poppins type compartment.  Right.

Look!  A dessert bigger than my kid's head.  Sign us up!

They cried when we left Sunday. 

The party's over.

I’d say my brother must have been happy to see them go but he turned up at our house the next week to visit so maybe they didn't completely sap his will to live.  More pandemonium ensued and lots of Super Mario was played on the Wii.  You could tell if the Wii was going at any given time based on whether or not you could hear them all yelling at each other over some misstep in the game. 

My husband couldn’t figure out how they could be having fun when they yelled that much.  He has clearly forgotten how much yelling he did when he was 9 and playing games.  And I don’t mean yelling at your parents telling them they’re mean yelling.  I mean, Why did you go off the right side of the screen so fast? You killed me as I was about to get the last star coin! yelling.  

The only thing better than bickering with each other while playing Wii is bickering with each other while eating Easter candy while playing Wii.  And believe you me, they shoved a lot of chocolate in their pie holes. 

They also found time to stalk me when I was trying to go on a run. 

Be cool, everyone.  No way our stupid mother will notice us sneaking up on her right.  

Have you ever tried to get your heart rate up while there’s a 7 year old hanging off the bottom of the back of your shirt?  Less than perfect.  I finally had to ditch them.  I'd pretend I felt bad except I didn't.  Sorry I'm not sorry.

Right before I ditched them and the giant stuffed cow.  I like that my brother's been around the block enough times with this crew to know to not waste time trying to referee the photo and just smile.  Well played.