Wardrobe MalFUNction

Cory, the kids and I all drove up to Indiana last week. We were originally coming for a very whirlwind weekend trip to attend a wedding in Western Illinois, but when Carter's school date pushed back almost 3 weeks, we had time to head up early. Cory's parents live in NW Indiana. We were going to take two days to get there, but made good time and no one was really whining so we decided to keep pushing. It was a long 16 hour drive, but we did it. The trick was pulling out of the driveway at 5am with kids still in pajamas. That's how we're traveling from now on. Out of all the traveling and driving we've ever done, this has been the best method.

4am: pack car
5am: put sleeping kids directly from bed into car seats
7am: make first stop to pee and get breakfast as kids wake up
12pm: make mid-trip destination and decide to keep going
9pm: pull in to in laws driveway

On the drive up, Carter had a fever the whole time and Vivi went through 5 changes of clothes. WHY DOES MY LIFE HAVE TO BE DICTATED BY EXPLOSIVE DIARRHEA???
After change #5 and only at our midway destination (Nashville), she was only allowed to wear a diaper and sit on a towel.
Despite the sickies, the trip wasn't a bad one.

We visited with everyone, went on the boat, swam at the pool and played in the sandbox.
Friday evening we drove from NW Indiana to W Illinois. We were happy, excited about the wedding we were to attend! Then..about 10 minutes from the exit we realized....

we left our wedding clothes hanging in the closet in Indiana...

Ohmygod. That's 3.5 hours away. That's the whole reason we came. We would have to turn around and make the 3.5 hour drive back to IN, then 3.5 more hours to get back to the wedding destination....some choice words were yelled very loudly, until they finally turned into hysteria..you know, that maniacal laughter that only comes after traveling over 1,000 miles with three small children, one of which can't seem to keep her poop inside the diaper....
We weighed our options:
On one hand, we had been planning this trip for months. We had hired a babysitter to go to town to get Cory a suit (that he desperately needed). The suit was expensive, and I had spent weeks picking out the right dress for the wedding. And, to buy clothes last minute isn't easy for either us. Let's just say we're not the target audience for buying clothes right off the rack.

On the other, do we really want to make that drive two more times? Once back to IN and once back again to the wedding?

By the time we had pulled into the hotel, we had decided we were dumping the kids with the grandparents and heading to the JCPennys across the street.

We will be the first to tell you there are slim pickins' at the JCPenny in the middle of nowhere, farm country, Illinois.

Luckily, the kids' clothes had made the journey. At least the kids' clothes made it! We can make do, but the kids will look so cute in their clothes I spent weeks picking out!
Unless, your daughter's name is Vivian Jane. Because if that happens to be the case, your daughter will very cutely wear her dress in the car on the way to the wedding. But will then swiftly and promptly make sure your day is ruined by having more EXPLOSIVE DIARRHEA all over her wedding clothes before you ever make it to the wedding....
We barely slipped into the wedding before it started (you know after spending all our time in the parking lot wiping poop out of the crevices on the car seat and from in between her fingers and toes.)

Lucky us, the wedding was outside in the afternoon. When the ceremony was over and we opened the car door, we had a nice poop flavored aroma to ride back to the hotel.