That road trip I mentioned?

I learned some things. Which tends to happen when you spend 15 hours in a car with three other people. So, I compiled them into one big, long run-on sentence since that was, frankly, easier. And here it is:

When you are leaving for Florida, and plan to drive, be prepared to return home at least once after exiting your neighborhood because you will forget something, like I forgot my cell phone charger and the thought without my cell phone was more devastating than finding that hair in my baked potato last week, and by all means, be prepared to have your 8-year-old read the walls inside a gas station bathroom at two in the morning when you stop for a ‘break,’ only to be shocked when you read them yourself, and all I can repeat here from that wall are the words, ‘I like to…,’ and you can imagine the rest but probably still wouldn’t come close, and be fully aware that when your husband asks you to drive because he’s tired, then asks you to get back in the passenger seat after you’ve only been behind the wheel ten minutes, he isn’t being kind, he simply doesn’t like your driving, and always consider shouts of ‘When are we gonna be there,‘ before you’ve even hopped on 465 as you’re leaving as major red flag indicators of how the trip will go, and who decided that I needed to be reminded of boiled pecans on giant billboards, not to mention the Adult Bookstores, every tenth of a mile while driving through Georgia, and why can you order breakfast for dinner at Cracker Barrel but not dinner for breakfast?, and of course you’ll find it adorable when your youngest son, who took his costume to trick-or-treat at his Nana’s house in Florida turns to you on the porch and says, ‘Alright, let’s go to the next house,‘ but you can’t because it’s not quite Halloween, and you wonder how the trip back somehow doubles in hours or so it seems, though you know it’s all worthwhile when you pick your 4-year-old up at preschool the day after returning home and he says…

‘I miss our vacation.’