Roadtripping with the smalls

A three hour road trip to a city with some dear friends, a heck of a zoo, and a great amusement park . 

With the kiddies, the drive and ensuing Calgary adventure has gone like this: 
1.  A gazillion snacks. 
2.  Taking off seat-belt a gazillion times to retrieve: a. spilled snack, b. dropped toys, and to interercept flaily-armed combantants.  And yes - these things DO constitute an emergency.  
3. Listen to children's stories on cd.  Over and over.  Ones that make your children happy and make you want to stab yourself in the eye.  Like Thomas the Train.  Fork. In. Eye.
4.  Find park.  Play.  Play.  Run the children to the brink of complete and total exhaustion.
5.  Find restaurant.  Fast food only, as this stop must be pulled off in just the right timing for car naps to succeed.  Stop too long and kiddies will be beyond tired, which, illogically makes for NO nap whatsoever. 
6.  Ahhhhhh.  Car nap success.  Change kids' stories to IPOD tunes.  Commence adult conversing and, as L. puts it, drive like hell.    
7.  Kiddies sleep all the way to outskirts of destination city.  L. and I feel very self-congratulatory.   Too soon!  Too soon!
8.  Get stuck in major traffic jam which causes children to literally vibrate with excitement "at being here" and nearly levitate out of their carseats child-in-car-fatigue-syndrome (oh it's real - ask any parent!).
9.  Finally make it to hotel and hit the pool in the 45 free minutes before we have to leave again to meet a friend downtown for dinner.
10.  Attempt to stick children back in car to head downtown.  They are, understandably, belligerent about this.
11.  Make several wrong turns due to wonky GPS instructions and unfamiliarity of city.
12.  Make it to restaurant destination, which has been dubbed "child friendly" only to discover they have neither highchairs, nor booster seats.  THEN MAKE YOUR RESTAURANT A BAR, WANKERS!
13.  Settle for The Old Spaghetti Factory, despite the utter crap-tasticness of their food, sevice and ambience, because we know they have both highchairs and booster seats. 
14.  Attempt to have conversation and a catch-up with wonderful friend whom you have missed, whilst kiddies act, erm, like kiddies who've been cooped up too long.  There may have been some whooping, screaming and running around like headless chickens.  But I'm no tattler. 
15.  Head back to the hotel, and attempt to put children to sleep in the same room at the same time. 
16.  Wonder what exactly made us believe this, in particular, was a grand idea.
17.  Get 50% of children to sleep, then blog on the "comfy chair" (aka hotel room toilet seat) while drinking screwcap wine from a plastic cup (because I'm classy like that), waiting for L. to convince other 50% that sleep might be a good idea, and if she's lucky, help me finish the bottle.

Wonder what adventures tomorrow will bring with the still awake two hours past his bedtime Boy-o?  How many times will Girlio wake Boy-o in the night?  Will the intrepid travellings moms be able to roll with the punches? 

Aaaaaahhhhh - the adventure and romance of life on the open road...