H is for Holiday

 

This week the Naughty family have finally departed on our school holiday break. I am currently posting this blog whilst sitting in the beautiful QLD sunshine. Thank God!!.   During a recent moment of insanity ( I swear we must have been drinking or smoking something) we decided to drive up from Sydney to Brisbane to visit my family for a little holiday.  Airfares costing what they do these days and being a family of four who would need our car whilst on holidays, we decided the most cost effective mode of transport up would be to drive.  Insanity right.  We've been hear one full day officially and I am only now just starting to recover from the trip up. 

It started innocently enough, we planned to pack bags and load up the car with everything we would need the on Sunday and then begin the 12 hour drive on Monday.  We have done this drive a few times  before ( last time I did it solo in one big drive) so we were prepared .  To make things easier we had also planned to stop in Coffs Harbour  for the night to make the drive even easier.   So I had planned as much as I possibly could without actually starting the drive.  Well you know what they say about the best plans.. 

We were hoping to leave by 9 at the latest on Monday to make it to Coffs mid afternoon.  Well, close..... I drove out our driveway at midday.  But that's ok, we only had to do a 6 hour drive and with daylight saving, we'd still be at our stop in daytime.  So we were off... until about 15 minutes down the road Mr T said his back hurts.  This is never a good sign because it is normally followed by tears and I want to get out. So we added some pillows to his seat to rest on and continued.  Five minutes later I turned to briefly check how Mr T was going and saw him doing that kid 'I'm gonna vomit face.' I barely had time to throw the plastic bag towards him before the vomit started.... This is not a great start.  So we stopped for about an hour to figure out if he was actually sick or not and deciphered that it appeared to be car sickness.  Lets continue.

So now the Naughty family are an hour and a half into the journey and we have travelled about 20 minutes from the house.  A quick search for the nearest chemist and the purchase of some motion sickness travel wrist bands and we were off again.  Peace at last?  Not quite.  It was about this time that Mr J decided he couldn't wait to get there any more and started "are we there yet?" and "how many more minutes until we get there"?  Fun right? 

Well, eventually we arrived in Coffs Harbour to a beautiful reasonably priced resort room ( sadly located next to the A/C engine plant), went out for a lovely family friendly dinner ( which I fell incredibly ill at the end of), and managed a fairly uneventful drive the rest of the way to my family.  If I never get a question about playing Disney Infinity on the Wii, or how many minutes is it again it will be too soon. 

I am starting to think that doing family car trips is kind of like child birth.   You look forward to it with excitement, plan with anticipation carefully, EXCRUCIATING PAIN, but then the endorphins kick in ( of the baby or the holiday whichever applies) and you forget all about the agonising pain until next time.

But its ok, I can sit back and relax a little.  I have the boys little cousin and Grandad and Aunty and some cheeky little puppies to help Naughty Hubby and I have a little bit of down time before we head back to the Sydney Rat Race..... and face the LOOOONNNNGGGGG drive home. 

I need a drink ; )

Xx