I think that wherever stories are told, this is one that will forever be shared in hushed, reverent tones like when sharing something of sheer terror.

We closed the front door of our sweet little home and found out directly afterward that Mom and Dad’s house had not funded before the title company closed and we were literally homeless. All of our stuff was split between a huge moving van, a storage unit, our two cars and Dad’s truck.

Mom and Dad were also homeless, so we all went to Bryant and Nicole’s and they dried our tears and held our babies and stuffed us with pizza and marble squares and inflated beds in their living room. And it was all okay. We all barely slept and we woke up hoping for good news and it came in the form of Aunt Nicole cooking yet again and making us a gourmet breakfast.

My sweet girl. She was up so early and I just snuggled with her in the bed and we figured out how to handle the day before she fell back asleep. It’s exhausting to worry over the family this much. 😉

Side note, we LOVE the Aunt Nicoles in our family. God blessed us exceedingly with those girls. I hate to brag, but my sisters-in-law are the best. No competition. I was an exhausted, emotional mess and my kids were even worse and Nicole just hopped right in and took over. Love her.

At one o’clock, Mom and Dad’s lenders finally funded and we got the keys to their house house. Mom and Dad walked in and the place was a mess. Nothing had been cleaned, all the bathrooms were disgusting. It was just so sad. And something none of us really had the emotional bandwith to handle that day. But, we put babies down for naps, plugged in vacuums and went to work.

At 1:30am, we finally had things cleaned and had moved in enough that we could at least get kids down for the night and we had a place to sleep. I fell into my mattress on the floor and we woke up at 5:30 with kids who didn’t know where they were, so we headed downstairs and got back to work.

Since we don’t close our our new house for another three weeks, Mom and Dad were gracious enough to let us live with them for the time being. So thankful for that! Even with all the insanity, it was so nice knowing that we at least had a place to be.

We unloaded our moving van into Mom and Dad’s garage that morning, Jon returned the van and picked up a rental car (which ended up being the BIGGEST blessing that week – we were on the fence about renting and Jon decided to just go for it and didn’t rent a van like we’d planned, but a giant Expedition EL. God was totally in that decision!), we loaded up clothes in laundry baskets since all our suitcases were missing in action. And then we started on THE TRIP to California about three in the afternoon.

Yes. We are INSANE.

The Trip started out well enough.

Note the smiles, the happy faces.

About eight o’clock, we stopped at some random gas station in Arizona and changed in the kids into their pajamas, hoping we could get a couple more hours of driving in while they slept. Jon’s cousin was getting married on Saturday and we were hoping to get there in time for the rehearsal dinner/family reunion the night before.

Jon changed Parker and said the words that would start it all… “Erynn, I think Parker feels a little warm.”

Thankfully, I had packed the thermometer in one of our tubs, so I pulled it out, took his temperature and it was 101.5. We both started praying, I gave him Motrin and we got back on the road. I remembered Eryn telling me that Junie had been running a fever the day before, so I texted her to find out how long she’d ran it and how bad the virus was. She wrote back, “Oh, it isn’t so good. Junie has Hand Food Mouth Disease.”

I think Jon and I both honest-to-goodness heard the music along the road. DUM DUM DUM DUUUUM. I started praying out loud.

We checked into a hotel in Kingman and none of us slept. Parker was up off and on all night. When he wasn’t up, Eisley was up. And when they were both semi-asleep, Nathan was up. We finally got up for breakfast and by that time, Parker had been moaning/screaming/fussing for about an hour and I finally got up the nerve to look into his mouth.

And we were greeted by the angriest looking blisters I’ve ever seen.

I think I cried right along with him.

I forced Motrin down his throat, we went down to breakfast, cleared the room very quickly with all our screaming and tired, grouchy kids and I was just sitting down to eat after getting everyone’s food, when Parker climbed into my lap, while screaming, and then threw up all over me. I mean, I have seen throw up and I have seen THROW UP. This was the second. We are talking, soaked-into-my-undies type of thing. My shoes squished it out when I stood up.

I grabbed Parker, Jon grabbed a few towels off a nearby housekeeping cart, I wrapped us both up and took us straight upstairs to the room. I stripped us both down, put us both in the shower and started scrubbing us off. We were almost done when Nathan came running into the bathroom after helping Jon clean up down in the lobby and started yelling, “Oh NO! I have DIARRHEA!”

There are only so many moments in your life when you can’t tell if you are laughing or crying, but this was one of them for me. I started laughing so hard I cried right there in that disgusting hotel bathroom. We dried off, debated whether we should just turn around and drive home and ended up deciding that we were halfway there, we might as well go the rest of the way.

Nathan fell asleep about ten in the morning and by noon, he was running a fever and had sores all over his mouth too.

And then Eisley pooped out everywhere.

And Jon and I self-medicated the only way you can on a road trip with three kids who are all sobbing with a contagious, painful disease on a road trip that will never ever EVER end:

#yes. Please notice I look like death.

We managed to get a smile coaxed out of them when we happened to catch that perfect combo of a cold milkshake on sore mouths right when the Motrin was at it’s highest peak. I seriously had an alarm on my phone and it would buzz and we would pull out the medication and load everyone up.

We made it to Nonnie and Papa O’s house and normally, I don’t know who is happier to see them – us or the kids, but this time, Jon and I basically leaped into their arms and cried sweet tears of joy that we were FINALLY OUT OF THE CAR.

Welcome to Infamy, Trip.