The drive home

9:40 am - finally in the car, can barely see the kids with all the stuff that seemed to expand while we were away

9:50 am - have gone 1 mile on the small state highway with 20+ more to go to get off the island

9:54 am - 6 1/2 year old son yells that his 3-year-old sister has thrown up in the back seat. She has.

10:02 am - we're back on the road only to pull over for homemade donuts at a bakery. The owners are training Moldavian women who barely speak English. It takes 10 minutes to fill our order, 2 minutes for the kids to finish the donuts and yell they are still hungry, another 15 to get more food.

10:32 am - back on the road

11:30am - finally off the island

12:00noon - got into another state but stuck on its highway #64

12:30 pm - barely moving on highway #64

12:37 pm - we stop for food and play in a McDonald's playspace

1:07 pm - back on the road. Still lots of traffic.

2:07 pm - my husband offers to dance naked on the roof of the car to the Lazytown CD that we've listened to 89 million times on this trip if the traffic breaks.

2:12 pm - the traffic mysteriously and without reason breaks. No accident. No sudden increase in the number of lanes. No long line at a particular exit. We are now driving faster than the posted speed limit after driving for hours at less than 20 or 30 mph.

2:14 pm - kids keep asking why we are laughing so hard, why I am unable to speak, why there are tears running down my check. [To date there has been no naked dancing to Step by Step.]

2:30 pm - kids finally fell asleep

3:30 pm - everyone is awake

3:45 pm - we pull into the visitor parking lot of a large medical center in this state's capitol to visit the 14-month-old son of my cousin. He was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer before his first birthday and he was getting a round of chemotherapy. Even though he was in a pediatric ICU, my cousin asked that we still come by to visit. She managed, in spite of our travel delays, to have her husband, mom (my aunt) and two older sons nearby so we could all visit.

The next 30 hours (we didn't get home until 10:00 pm the following day) - in spite of all the bickering, complaints of hunger, multiple bathroom breaks, never-ending playing of the Lazytown CD (but still no naked dancing on the roof), guilt over letting the kids play non-stop Gameboys and watch the same four Backyardigan episodes on DVD, the lack of any healthy foods, it all seems pretty trivial.

I've got three healthy kids and a lovely husband. We had the privilege of spending two weeks in a fancy house a mile from a beach. And I am part of a pretty amazing larger family.

Get better baby boy. Please, get better.