We just got back from what was not supposed to be a whirlwind trip out west that ended up being a whirlwind trip anyway. (Many thanks to Aaron’s much-loved and so understanding boss who kindly cut our vacation short by five days and made Aaron work The. Entire. Time so that we didn’t get to do just about anything on our list of things to do, even though we only get out that way once every few years, and Aaron had to miss accompanying Christian on his very first bus ride ever that Christian had been talking about the entire week before we left, and yea, verily, is talking about still. Voo-doo doll coming up.)

We learned a few things on this trip which I will forthwith share with you in case you ever need to know these things:

1) A twenty-one-hour trip (so saith Google Maps) is more like thirty hours when traveling with two small children, one of whom must stop to suckle every two to three hours. Or every twenty minutes. Whichever she feels like at any given moment (and I will leave to your imagination the guess as to which of these choices was the most favored).

2) A twenty-one-hour trip (so saith Google Maps) with a sicker-than-he’s-ever-been-it-must-have-been-the-swine-flu toddler in the back seat is similar to having a root canal sans mouth epidural. Or so I imagine. I’ve never actually had a root canal, but I feel that I can speak with authority on this subject since I was trapped in the car for thirty hours with a sick toddler. Trust me; take the root canal.

3) Driving thirty hours straight through is not recommended with two small children.

4) Driving thirty hours straight through is not recommended with two adults who have not had adequate sleep and who are departing at ten o’clock in the evening in the middle of the worst rain storm of the year.

5) Montana is not a good place to remind your boss that you told him you’d be out of town this week, so no, you can’t attend the mandatory meeting that has been rescheduled twice and was never rescheduled before the absolutely latest time that you could depart and still make it to your destination in time to see your wife’s sister whom you have not seen for three years and will not see again for who knows how long.

6) Montana is the State That Never Ends. Ever. And for some reason, residents of the State That Never Ends do not believe in regularly spaced gas stations, so it’s anybody’s guess if you’ll make it out on your own four wheels, or on the back of a tow truck that charges $98.00 a mile.

7) No need to go deer hunting; just drive down any Montana highway in the middle of the night, and you’ll get more venison/possum/skunk/raccoon/cows/tow-truck drivers than you could ever get on a hunting license.

8) If you only get to visit Grandma and Grandpa every three or four years, you can bank on the fact that you will have a sicker-than-he’s-ever-been-it-must-have-been-the-swine-flu toddler for the first six days of your nine days there. That way, you’ll get to spend your entire vacation nursing a whiny, fussy, clingy toddler back to health, while Grandma gets to hold your baby who is screaming because She. Wants. Her. Mommy. !! Plenty of joy to go around.

9) Before you leave, Grandma, Grandpa, Mommy, Daddy, Gas Station Attendants, Auntie, Baby Cousin, and miscellaneous Tow Truck Drivers will all be infected with whatever your sicker-than-he’s-ever-been-it-must-have-been-the-swine-flu toddler had when he sneezed right in their faces. But Hubby’s boss will remain healthy, despite your best wishes.

10) The morning mist rising off the foothills on I-5 south between Bellingham and Mount Vernon is just as beautiful as I remembered. Seeing old friends brought back the fondest of memories, and tweaked a little spot of homesickness that I thought had long been stamped out. Being back in my old house, watching my kids play in my old yard, and showing up at my parents’ church with my two progeny inspired all kinds of warm fuzzies inside me. But I discovered that sometime in the past three years, I must have put down roots in the corn-stubbled black dirt fields of North Dakota, because none of it felt quite the same to me as it did back in my sage age of teenagerness (is too a word!) when I positively declared that if I ever settled down anywhere, it was going to be in the shadow of Mount Baker.

11) Taking a toddler and a baby on the city bus just for fun is…kind of fun. Even when the toddler is still sicker-than-he’s-ever-been-it-must-have-been-the-swine-flu. Which probably makes me a bad mommy for exposing countless bus riders to his sickness, but it was the only chance he was going to get to ride the bus, and I figured, hey, better sicker-than-they’ve-ever-been-it-must-have-been-the-swine-flu bus riders on my hands than a toddler who didn’t get to ride the bus after he’d been talking about it for the entire week before we left. They should have worn a mask if they didn’t want to get sick.

12) It’s okay to be annoyed at your parents’ neighbor who tells you to please shut your bedroom window because your baby’s forty-five minute long “hour-and-a-half" crying spree that you slept through because apparently your blood sugar dropped low in the night kept her from getting more than an hour of sleep because she went to bed at three-thirty in the morning and she doesn’t believe you when you tell her without crossing your fingers behind your back that your baby really doesn’t usually cry at night cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die and don’t you think I’d hear her if she did because, good golly, she’s sleeping in my bed? Go to bed earlier. !!

13) People who lend toys (and strollers and pack’n'plays and gloriously wacky Dr. Suess books) to your kids for a week and a half deserve special crowns in heaven, especially when a fire engine and a dump truck and a great big plastic mountain thingy with railroad tracks and yellow brick roads and a helicopter and little rotund plastic people that fit just perfectly in the baby’s mouth are included. (Yeah, that’s a shout-out to you, Shaver family) You are forgiven for including light-up, music-playing toys that provided my children with hours upon hours of joyful entertainment while Mommy buried her head between the couch cushions (but knew she could safely do this because her children were completely occupied with a light-up, music-playing toy).

14) When traveling back through the State That Never Ends at night on a curvy mountain road with your fake Christmas tree disassembled and stored in two plastic totes strapped to the roof of your car that is packed to the gills with stuff you did not come with, it doth behoove you, when you suddenly spot the carcass of a deer immediately in the meager glare of your headlights that is too close to swerve around, to not attempt to straddle it. And make sure to carry bungee cords with you for when this happens to you and you forget and straddle it anyway and knock something presumably important but unidentifiable off the bottom of your vehicle and need to refasten it quickly because there’s nothing around for miles and it’s the middle of the night and frostbite is imminent if you remain outdoors any longer and you certainly can’t camp out by the side of the freeway all night, and it’s Montana, so it’s not like any more people will be driving by in the day time than at night, anyway.

15) There is a reason why we only make the twenty-one hour drive (so saith Google Maps who does not, apparently, adjust its equations for those traveling with small children, a canine, and an avian) out west once every three or four or twenty years. I’ll let you guess on that one.

16) Spending time with family is, pardon the cliche, totally worth doing it all again. After my skull fractures have healed.