Minneapolis 2013 - Day 3

Final day of our first family vacation!

- Woke up this morning when I heard Violet around 8am. She was already wide-eyed and bushy tailed getting out of bed. So I took her to the bathroom to get changed and let her sit on the potty before we started our long drive back home. And to top it all off, I had a huge headache forming. 

- Once we were all dressed, packed and ready to go, with Violet holding Teddy Bear in her jacket, Keith went over the room once more and then we proceeded to head home. It’s been nice to get away from the house, but at the same time, it would have been much nicer to have more for Violet to do. We did manage to get everything in the car, and we were squished. Maybe next time, no stroller?

- Found our way out by following the directions backwards and then hit slow moving traffic on the City Interstate. Took us almost an hour to get out of Minneapolis and then we hit bad weather. Parts of the road were black ice (mainly the right lane) and we couldn’t do anything over 80km. We saw so many cars in the ditch and rolled over from the opposite lanes, it was a little bit unnerving. Luckily Keith drove us safely while I dealt with Violet. And luckily she fell asleep shortly after we got out of Minneapolis and slept for 3 hours. Guess there was nothing interesting for her to see. I fell asleep for a little bit here and there to try to get rid of this blasted headache.

- It ended up taking up almost 6 hours to reach Grand Forks, in what should’ve been a 4 hour drive. We didn’t stop for anything and luckily our fuel tank made it as we were on the last needle before empty. That’s how much Keith was pushing it. The weather cleared up after Fargo (which turned into a 5 hour drive), so we were able to do normal highway speeds until Grand Forks. 

- Got to Grand Forks around 1:30, so we stopped for fuel and were going to go to Texas Roadhouse for lunch, but they didn’t open up until 4:30. So we went to IHOP for food as we were all starving. Violet picked this time to be a bit of a shney as she just wanted to run around. She did eat her food and some of mine as she had only been eating the junk that we had bought for the car ride. Then we quickly stopped by Hobby Lobby so that I could take a look as to what they had. I was so tempted to buy some stuff, but I didn’t as I didn’t want to blow too much money. But it was so nice seeing so much scrapbooking stuff!

- We also stopped by the Columbia Mall so that Violet could walk around for a bit. But we were pushing our luck with her, as she was getting quite cranky. We bummed around for a bit and then headed back to the car. Violet was out like a light before we even left Grand Forks. Poor girl.

We made it to the Border Crossing in good time. The only bad thing was that we passed the Duty Free. We didn’t even realize that we had passed it until it was too late. I told Keith that we could turn around, but he just wanted to get home. Spending this long on the road was taking a toll on all of us. I was getting uncomfortable sitting for so long and so was Jr.

- Got home close to 7:00 pm and I got Violet in the house while Keith unpacked the car. I’m going to have a mess to clean up in there. Once everything was inside, I started unpacking all the bags while Violet played with her toys. Loads of laundry to do tomorrow.

- Lisa showed up around 8:30 pm (for Girl's Night) and we let Violet stay up until 9:00 pm. She did really good in the car and just needed to let her energy out before bedtime. And Violet took an opportune time in the living room to pee right through her panties onto the carpet. I couldn’t give her crap though, as she had just spent since Sunday in a diaper. Although she knew that she did bad. I gave her a hug and kiss and told her that we’ll work on this. Luckily baking soda is my best friend for getting pee out of my carpet. It just looked like a white explosion happened in the living room. 

- And yes, it was nice to sleep in our own bed again.