Trip To Colorado

Since Kinley did pretty well on the previous vacation to Tan-Tar-A, we decided it would be nice to take a trip to Colorado and visit my college roommate from TCU. (Before I went to KU for pharmacy school I went to Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, TX and got my undergrad degree in Nutrition.) Anyway, from our house to Arin's house should have been a 13 hour road trip.

Kevin and I decided the easiest way to make the trip with a 15 month old was to drive through the night. We ended up leaving our house at 10 am on a Tuesday a couple of weeks ago and drove to Topeka to visit my parents for the day before leaving there at 7 pm. From Topeka the trip should have taken only 12 hours, plus there was a time change so we expected to arrive at Arin's around 6 am on Wednesday.

The trip started off great. Kinley had gotten used to her new car seat and traveled pretty well in it. Around 8:30 pm I gave Kinley her night time bottle in her car seat as we were traveling so that we could stay on pace to arrive on time. I have given Kinley bottles in her car seat before and she does just fine. In fact, sometimes she eats better in the car. I was able to get Kinley to take her whole 8 oz bottle of Pediasure (woohoo). We kept traveling and just before we hit Hays, KS all 8 oz of Pediasure came back up. There was Pediasure on Kinley, in her car seat and on the seat of the car. It was everywhere, and so was the smell! I was ready to turn around, cancel the trip and head home. Lucky for me, Kevin is good at staying calm and rational in these situations. He used the GPS to find a hotel in Hays with laundry services and saved the day. (He is so smart!)

We ended up stopping at the Ramada in Hays and I was fully willing, and expecting to pay for a room for the night just to give Kinley a bath and do a load of laundry. I was shocked when Kevin came back from the front desk and said they were going to let us use a room for free! The laundry services were coin operated, so we paid for that, but that was pretty cheap. When Kevin explained to the gentleman at the desk what had happened he said they had a whole wing where the air was broke, so they could not rent out any of those rooms anyway. He said we could just use one of those rooms. Kevin and I didn't care about the air not working, we just needed to clean up, so it worked out great. They were really nice at the Ramada. Here are a couple of pics of Kinley (after her bath) crawling up and down the hall as we waited for the washer/dryer to end. Keep in mind it is around midnight and she is wide awake.

I was able to get Kinley to take another whole 8 oz bottle of Pediasure while we were at the hotel, and that one stayed down!

After our fun little stop in Hays we were back on the road again. We made it past Denver and just about an hour and a half shy of our destination without any problems. That is when Kinley woke up and I had the bright idea to give her another bottle for breakfast instead of stopping and letting her eat table food. We didn't plan on our stop in Hays though, so I thought a bottle would be better so that we could keep traveling. It was 8 am by this time and if we didn't have to stop earlier we would have arrived at our destination 2 hours ago. Just about 2 oz into the bottle Kinley sent it right back up. Again all over her and her car seat. At least this time in was only 2 oz and it didn't get on the seat of the car. We were in the middle of nowhere Colorado, so we didn't have much of a choice but to keep going. Needless to say, I didn't try feeding Kinley a bottle in the car again. I don't think the problem was car sickness, because she has eaten just fine in the car in the past. I think she was still getting over her cold and that made it hard for her to take a bottle.

We finally ended up arriving around 9:30 am and the first thing we did when we got there was to give Kinley a bath and do another load of laundry. Kevin is an expert at taking the new car seat out of the car and taking it apart to wash.