Ever Have One of THOSE Vacations? Pt. 1

See the bag?  Pay attention; it plays an integral role in this story.

So we took Sunday and Monday for a "let's celebrate being finished with school (Mama included) vacation day.  We got up early, ate breakfast, made great time, and arrived on-time at our destination.  Our room wasn't ready yet, so S decided to find the nearby Bass Pro Shop, which I was fine with, because it's within a big mall.  Well, it used to be.

We arrived to find Bass Pro, with no doors leading to the mall, and once I found my way into the mall, there were only 4 stores left, one of which was closing.  Yay.  At least we found 10 for $10 at Claire's and the girls (Ok, it was really me) went crazy. 

As we were finishing up, Snugglebug started complaining of a headache.  I gave her Children's Tylenol and prayed for her, but she still was acting funny.  As we were walking to the next store, she began crying...like major crying, crying she hasn't done in years.  However, S was in another store and wasn't answering his phone, so I had to bide my time. Finally, we were able to leave, but we stopped at a Perkins to eat something fast (and cheap) before going back to our room (they called about 30 mins after we drove away to say the room was ready).  We shouldn't have stopped.

Right as the food was delivered to our table....bluck.  You guessed it:  Snugglebug got sick.  Ick.  We left and headed back to our room, already deciding we would take turns taking Lovely out to play in the water while the other watched Snugglebug.

We got to our room and I began to get unpacked.  I grabbed our swimming suits and--no wait.  I didn't grab our swimming suits.  Hmm.  Where did that black bag go?

Honey, did you bring in everything from the car?  You did?  EVERYTHING?  Did you forget to pack the black bag?  You know, the one with the swimming suits?  No, I didn't pack it.  Ummm... 

Over two hours.  That's how long it took me to drive back from our room all the way home again, by myself while S stayed with a grumpy Lovely and a sick Snugglebug.  Where was the bag?  Remember that picture above?  It was right there, in front of my closet.  My bad.  Two hours:  that's what it took to get back to the hotel.  The water park closed at 10 p.m., I got there at 9:54.  Lovely only cried for...a while. 

Now, you ask, why did I have to drive ALL the way home again?  Well, I'm not the kinda gal who can just go to the nearest store and get a swim suit (as I'm sure many of you aren't, for various reasons).  I'm extremely modest, so I have the swim suit, a swim dress cover-up, and a swim skirt that I sewed from a pair of men's swim trunks.  Yes, I wear all that and I'm quite pleased with the results.  Then, I would still have to find swimming suits for the girls and S.  Not an easy task on a Sunday night at 5:30 p.m. (with stores closing at 6 p.m.).  Sigh.  Oh well, at least I got a good dosing of lotion while rifling through my purse for the car keys--my lotion's lid came off somewhere on the trip and doused the contents of my purse. 

First lesson learned on vacation:  I would make a pretty good truck driver, if only I had a sense of direction.   Thankfully, my GPS got me home again, even though it freaked me out when it told me to cross a river on "ferry street."  (Previously, it directed us to non-existent ferries, which developed into a fear of ferry directions.)  At least I was able to laugh!