Road Worthy Stimulation

Well we just got back from a road trip to the North. We ended up clocking over 1000km and I didn't have to stop and buy ear plugs! Alistair, if you can believe it, laughed and giggled all the way up! Did he know Mom was preparing for the worst? It actually went so well that I ended up staying up North four extra days then I had anticipated.

Alistair & Francis just seemed to want to lap up all the attention they could get. I was worried Alistair may get to a point of being overstimmed and really just the evenings he'd have a good ol' melt down and then he seemed to wake ready for the next day.

 Actually a few times during the day he needed some down time but that isn't any different then being here at home. It actually made me so happy to see how much attention Little Mr Man did get. I'm sure I've said it many times before but some people just don't know what to do with him so he may as well be a materialistic object. But my whole family seemed to be just so comfortable with him. Some kids just couldn't get enough of him.

As for Francis there were several little mother hens that just couldn't get enough of her either!

It was quite fun to watch how she responded to everyone as well.

Anyways, thanks to my Auntie Rosie she planned a "Decade Party" (family reunion). This year there was someone to represent each decade from zero to seventy hence Francis is in the picture above.

Jason even took a break from work to come up and hang out with the family.

There were several fun events planned over the weekend. Obvious a "Dead Horse Creek Ranch" version of golf, a three hour intense MANTRACKER! which would have been worthy of a reality show: cousins jumping into dugouts, riders falling off into dugouts, runners coming across black bears, horses swimming in dugouts, the works!

To top it off a fair number of our runners were under the age of 8. Fun Times. We also played a good ol' family card came of hoss which we of course didn't start till 1130pm and it didn't finish till 3 in the morning! Needless to say this trip was not about getting in extra ZZzzzzz's

Oooo this is just an intermission for a cute picture HA HA HA

So after leaving the ranches and saying goodbye to Mom and Jason I headed into town and caught up with several groups of friends. Some from my nursing days in the north,

some from my cooking on the pipeline days and then I just spent some more days having one on one time with cousins. I just kept getting invited to stay so I did! We then took a small trip towards Prince George and spent the night in Hudson Hope and shared a hotel with Jason where he is working for the week. It was kind of fun to hotel it there rather than zoom on by like I usually do.

En route home I did learn a few extra tricks to put up my sleeve. Alistair was so tired and started to winge and I noticed in the rearview mear he was becoming a bobble head. So I suddenly got the idea to take Francis's head support and give it to Alistair finishing it off with a safety pin in front. Within minutes he was asleep.

The other thing that I've incorportated into our lives in the last few months is this piece of high density foam. I noticed one day that Alistair was alot more curious to roll about at Mom's place where she had brand new plush carpets where when he got home he wouldn't roll nearly as much with the foam pads and small area rug. So I went and got this from our local foam store and what a difference its made. He's rolling like crazy and now consistently throughout the day he's getting up on his hands and knees as then when he does fall forward on his head he's got a cushion to catch him. Anyways, I found if I roll it up snuggly it will fit nicely between the front and back rows in the SUV. So everywhere we were at this piece of foam got yarded out. It was in living rooms, tents, back yards, decks, and here in this picture I threw it down at the provincial park while we had some lunch and both kidlets promptly fell asleep afterwards. So as you can tell it was a very successful road trip which was just good for me in itself as I came to realize I'm not nearly as house bound as I once thought!