Tales from the back of a very large van. Part 2.

On the way home, Ruby asked if we were in Africa. We were in Sioux City, IA. Strange, those Africans looked remarkably Dutch. Detour?

I bought bananas and peanuts for snacks on the way home. They were buried under three feet of luggage. We found them when we unloaded the van.

A box of Kix spilled in the van. Kix on vinyl van floors are something akin to marbles on ceramic tile. I had to catch more than on kid as I opened the doors when we stopped to use bathrooms along the way.

Kix and shop vacs don’t work well together. I simply vacuumed them up, moved to a different area, shut the vacuum off, and had Kix roll back out. The hose was plugged solid with them.

I’m hoping birds like Kix.

We were 52 minutes into our drive that averages 10.5 hours when I banned the question, or anything remotely similar to, “Are we almost there?”

We were 46 minutes down the road when I got the first “I need to go potty” from the backseat.

Despite using many, many toilets along the way, one dear fairly recently potty trained child didn’t make it. Many times. Her car seat had to be poured out and thoroughly scrubbed when we got there. She wore a diaper on the way home. Blessed invention.

A can of pink paint from my childhood bedroom came home with us. Some of it didn’t make it. My van was sporting pink stripes when we pulled in the driveway. Clorox wipes saved us from wearing them permanently. If you drive a really nice car and found yourself wearing pink polka dots after driving anywhere near a very large white van somewhere in Missouri on Monday… that’ll be $200 for a custom paint job, drive through style.