The Other Side of a Family Vacation.

Yesterday marked the beginning of our family vacation. Ahh….vacation. The word alone makes you feel all loosey goosey in the limbs, all happy-go-lucky in the brain, all relaxed.
Not exactly the case if you’re toting along a 2 year old who gets carsick. With a mother who gets equally car sick. With a father who is running late for his improv comedy reunion show due to the fact that he had to stop and pick up said 2 year old who is now on the side of the highway in only his diaper because he vomited on every possible surface, including his car seat, in said Mothers car. Mother subsequently had to drive the remainder 1 1/2 hours with all the windows down in the 95 degree heat with the attempt to air out her car. And Father drove nervously with Family Dog in his lap and mostly naked toddler in the only remaining clean car-seat, hoping that, 1. No more vomit would occur and 2. He would make it to his show without too much of a lingering stench.
Happy-go-lucky, my butt.
Well, we made it to the beach house. I hosed off all the stenchy surfaces, unloaded the car in the now 98 degree heat, tried to put toddler down for an actual nap, (because frankly, the 30mins he dozed off in the car before he threw up didn’t count in my book), kissed Husband goodbye and wished him an excellent show, (really trying to be the Supportive Wife, but all I could think about was how his son and I were supposed to be well-rested, fed, showered and back in the car again to make it to his show in 2 hours. Good luck, Honey!). Toddler never went to sleep, something about hearing a dump-truck outside? And Mother needed to put her game face on.

I took a bath, desperately tried to un-wrinkle my Supportive Wife outfit and worked on keeping toddler happy in his bath (it’s amazing what a plastic cup and a tea-strainer can do). Put on makeup in the small, steamy mirror, sweat through my clothes yet again and then bribed toddler with chocolate to get out of the now-too-fun bath. Get toddler dressed in fancy clothes and remember Family Dog hasn’t peed since we got here.
Crap, we haven’t eaten yet. OK, boil some pasta that I happened to pack.

Put empty-bladdered Family Dog in crate and bribe child with sucker to get into the car again and go to Daddy’s Show. Stop at wine store to get Mommy a post-show bottle of Bubbly, go back to beach house to chill it, find Family Dog out of crate, (How in the world did this happen?!?), put Family Dog back in crate, leave for show. Entertain almost falling-asleep toddler with Elmo songs and silly dancing and hope to find a parking space in downtown Wilmington on a Saturday night. And feeling so incredibly guilty for not staying at home and putting toddler to bed like a responsible mom.
Then something happened when we turned onto Front Street. The cars parted and revealed the best parking space in the city, my son suddenly got a second wind and was giddy with big-city excitement,

*Easy White Chocolate Pound Cake
-find The Cake Doctor’s recipe for White Chocolate Pound Cake and substitute yellow cake mix for the white cake mix. It produces a much denser cake, and it goes really well with Prosecco, specifically Nino Franco Rustico.