Clown Car

We took a trip south recently in our "clown car," which is a 2 door chevy cavelier. Unfortunately the family who used to watch our dogs on long trips have moved away, so when we travel, our 75 pound and 40 pound dogs come too.  Everyone does manage to fit, although it is rather tight.  Esteban sits on the floor in the back; Eliott, the princess, dominates the middle of the backseat and the boys sit in their carseats on either end.  All the luggage is squeezed into the trunk.  Ryan is allowed one small backpack of car activities to share with Dylan (coloring books, crayons, mazes, dot-to-dot, small action figures), if it can fit in the backpack it can come.  This particular trip was 11 hours long without stops.  

Usually, we load one rental movie onto the iPad for those meltdown "I-can't-take-sharing-this-car-with-my-brother-one-more-minute" type of moments, but I thought it was ridiculous to pay $4.99 for ONE rental movie on itunes.  The kids would have to suck it up and do this thing the old-fashioned way. No movies. I felt like a pioneer: there would be no "technology" on this trip; we would rely on good old fashioned music and our own creative ingenuity and wit to get through this trip and still remain sane.  And I have to say I was proud of those kids.  They surpassed my expectations.  Sure there was the ocasional, "are we there yet?" and "He's looking at me wrong," or "he bumped me," but it really was few and far between.  Those kids now know far more songs than they did at the start of the trip and they used their powers of observation on the road in ways that surprised me: "Look at the cows!" "look at the airplane!" "Look at the BIG truck!" "Look that truck has pigs in it!"  When they got tired of that, they colored and looked at books. And when they got tired of that, they made up their own games, which largely involved poking each other and disolving into giggles.  It was actually really great. 

Dylan made some serious attempts at striking up conversation, probably out of boredom,and it was the exact same conversation script each and every time but hey he did try.  It went something like this:

Dylan: "Esteban is an old dog?"

Tiredly, one of us: "Yes Esteban is old." 

Dylan: "We gotta be gentle?

Patiently, one of us: "Yes we need to be very gentle."

"Don't want to hurt him?"

Relieved this conversation is mostly over now: "Nope, don;t want to hurt Esteban."

This conversation repeated itself about 500 times. 

The only real downside was poor, old Esteban. We were only two hours into the trip when Esteban, our epileptic dog, began to have a seizure.  Let me tell you, a 75 pound dog seizing on the floor of a small car is not especially fun.  But there was nothing we could particularly do for him, except wait for it to pass, and being confined to the car was certainly safer than him seizing and crawling around next to a busy highway, so we kept going. 

We usually get a lot of looks and comments when we travel this way: when we stop for gas, when we go through the drive-through or bathroom stops.  Someone offered us another dog, which we had to politely decline.  Clown car. 

 Our troopers

Our old, big, trooper, who loves sleeping with his legs up in the air for some reason.