Travel Horror Story

*This post is not for the queasy. If reading about someone throwing up makes you feel unwell, you might want to skip this one!

Okay, here is my most recent travel horror story. In April we headed off to district conference where my husband was going to be ordained. We were pretty excited, this was a big deal! It took us about five and a half hours to get there and everything seemed fine. Anyone who has ever been to Saint John New Brunswick (Canada) knows that city is a nightmare to drive in. There are so many one ways. The street signs sit on an angle so that you don't know which road they represent. Anyway, we got caught in this one way loopy thing and we had to do it a few times to finally find the road we needed. I get car sick easy (which means I have a lot of travel horror stories from my childhood) and it seems I have passed this on to my kids. We were trying to find the big church where an opening banquet was being held. The kids were hungry, tired of driving and feeling all those loops. We finally find the church and walk in and immediately have to stand in a long line to register for the conference. While in the line, my youngest starts gagging, I quickly rush him off to the corner to a garbage can but nothing comes. Whew! I was worried he'd throw up in front of all the people in the line, waiting to eat! So we register and find out the kids are supposed to go downstairs to a kids program so we head on down. We walk in, get them all registered and all of a sudden he starts gagging again, only this time he throws up all over the floor in front of all the kids. Nice. I am not good with vomit and can't clean it up. My husband and one of the ladies clean it all up. Now I figure, okay, he's done it and should feel better now, after all he is only carsick, right? I decide to sit with him a while...wait...where did the oldest go. Oh, my husband informs me he is in the bathroom and seems to have diarrhea, great. I see where this is going. Oh, there goes the middle one, off to the bathroom too. Uh oh, now the youngest has thrown up again, this time all over me. Time to go back to the motel, this is not just car sickness, but first we must stop at the garbage can again...poor little guy. So we get the motel and it is brand new, so nice and I love that there is actually white duvets on the bed. White duvets....this seemed like a good thing at first. Hubby runs out the the grocery store to get us something to eat. We all snack a bit on some fruit, and that sends the two youngest to the bathroom throwing up. Our good friends are coming the next day and we are looking forward to visiting with them only I can now see I'm going to spend the whole three days in this hotel room. So my poor baby is up all night throwing up, won't keep the gravol down. In the morning I feel like I've been run over, so tired. I can't let Joseph up on the bed because of all the white so he has slept on the floor all night. Oh ya, the carpet is a nice light shade too. My husband goes to the store to get liquid gravol this time and the pharmacist tells him to buy some Gatorade. So he buys Red!! Do you see where this is going? I give this red drink to Joseph and he precedes to throw it up all over the nice light carpet and the white pristine towels. I took them down to laundry apologizing. They were great, they gave me new towels, pillowcases and lots of rags and disinfectant. The next day our friends arrive and no one has thrown up for a few hours so we think we'll try and go out for lunch and bring a cup for Joseph with us, just in case. So we are at the table, waiting for our food and Joseph drinks some chocolate milk and then throws it all up into the cup at the table. I go dump it and then Andrew uses it because seeing his brother throw up makes him sick again. I feel so bad for the people at the tables around us! It didn't make for a nice lunch! Back to the hotel jail! Thankfully, my friend offers to stay with the sick one so I can at least attend my husband's ordination ceremony. We are both haggard and tired and look it! Time to go home, we invest in some sand buckets for the drive home. They were used several times but we made it. What a long trip that was (3 days but felt like at least a week!). Poor Joseph kept this up for two more weeks. That is my travel horror story! Head over to Absolutely Bananas for hers and more travel horror stories. And hey, if you have one yourself, blog about it and link up too!