Adventure or disaster, you decide.

I got a little adventurous and took the kids to the Castle in the Clouds on Monday. I figured, it's probably about a two hour trip, give or take, we have the new minivan with a DVD player, what could possibly go wrong? The trip up was fairly uneventful, although it turns out that there are two Ossippee Roads (FYI, if you take a trip up there, use the Old Mountain Road address for your GPS!) in Moultonboro. We arrived at about 10:30; the weather was amazing - cool, crisp, quintessential New England Fall day. The kids were duly impressed by the giant "pebble" and the water fall, and not so impressed at the scenic lookout over the mountains and Lake Winnipesaukee. They were, however, very excited over the prospect of Matt, um, relieving himself outdoors. I mean, come on, that was cool!

We walked up to the old carriage house for lunch. Jill enjoyed a sip of my "apple spider." Then it was to the trolley for a short drive to the castle. The driver asked Matt if he wanted to sit on the small bench across from the driver's seat... You should have seen the look on his face sitting up there like a big kid!

I think the castle itself was a little lost on them both - the history behind it all, of course, but also the fact that: no, you can't use the bathrooms in here because it's a museum and they don't work, and don't sit on the furniture!! No, you can't touch that either! Let's just go outside.

I tried to take a decent picture of the two of them for possible use in a Christmas card... this is what I came up with:

Anyway, the nightmare began when we left around 1:30.  Right around Concord NH, about an hour from home, Matt announced that he had to use the bathroom (again).  The traffic was starting to pick up, anyway, so I pulled off the highway and stopped at a Border's bookstore.  An hour, two books and a stuffed monkey later, we were back on the highway.  However, now the traffic was bumper to bumper.  Several times over the next hour I considered pulling off the highway and finding an alternate route, but I figured it was just traffic going up to the tolls and once we got past them, we'd be home free.  Except that two hours later, we had just passed the tolls and there was still bumper to bumper traffic.  And the kids were getting very antsy.  The DVD's weren't cutting it anymore.  Matt spilled an entire five gallon zip-lock freezer bag of animal crackers all over the floor.  Jill dropped her book and was whining that she wanted it back.  Matt had thrown his new stuffed monkey over the front seat and it was sitting on the floor on the passenger side and I announced that he had lost it for the duration of the trip home. 

I swear I almost had a nervous breakdown when - four hours into our "two hour" hour trip home - we approached the 293/93S split and there was a big ol' sign that said, "Rt 93S Closed due to an accident.  Please seek alternate route." And of course, we wanted - no needed - Rt 93 South.  I had to pee.  Jill had to pee.  Matt and Jill both were asking every couple of minutes, "Why is it taking for so long??"  I was yelling at them to shut up (well, on the inside anyway).  I do believe that at one point, when Jill was asking me for the umpteenth time to find her book for her, I said, "Jill, do you want to drive? Can your feet reach the pedals? Do you know how to drive a car? Because unless you can do all those things, I cannot come and find your book! So stop asking!"  Not proud moment for me for sure, but I'd like to see you keep your cool when you've been stuck in the car with two toddlers for five hours!

Anyway, at that point I realized that the only thing I could do was take 293 to Manchester NH and then get off the highway and take the back roads to my parents' house for a sanity pit stop and some dinner, so that's what I did - with yet another potty break at the Manchester Mall because Jill simply could not wait another 15 minutes to get to Pelham.

So long and painful story short, what should have been a two hour drive home took us a grand total of 7 hours (including the three stops we made on the way).  Moral of the story? The next time I have the urge to be adventurous with the kids and it's a holiday weekend, stay home!