Hap-pee Halloween

So far I have found no perks to traveling alone.  Alone meaning without Brian.  We still have a few more days until we can officially move into our new house.  Unfortunately, this move can not happen soon enough.  Brian spent last week commuting two hours.  Now this may not seem like a big deal to some, but when he is gone from 6:30am-8:00pm it's a big deal to us.  Side note: the kids' bedtime is 7:30, so this puts a kink in our schedule.  Anyway, so instead of us sitting around in a boxed up house the whole time, I decided to take the kids to my mother's house in Georgia for a couple of days.  This saved us from getting cabin fever and saved Brian a lot of driving.

There have been four incidents now where we have gotten in the car, driven about 20 minutes and Ella announces that she has to go potty.  Thankfully, I have not been alone and we are able to stop at a gas station and one of us takes her in.  Well, about 45 minutes into our drive home from Georgia I hear those ill-timed words, "Mommy, I need to go potty."  I groaned.

With still over an hour more to drive, I knew that I could not hold her off until we got home.  I pulled into the nearest gas station.  I considered my options:

Option 1)  Leave Aiden and Riley in the van and lock the doors.  It'll take less than 5 minutes.  They'll be fine.  Well I ruled that out pretty quickly.  This is the kind of thing mothers get arrested for.

Option 2)  Unload all of the kids, put their shoes on and attempt to take Ella potty while holding Riley and keeping Aiden from crawling on the floor under the stalls.  Public restrooms are so disgusting.  I have a germ-a-phobia too, this cannot end well.  Next...

Option 3)  Scope out junk in the van and create a porta-potty.  I think I'll go with this one. 

An empty water bottle.  Nah, hole is too small.  Wipe box.  I could take all of the wipes out and she can pee in that.  Hey, it even has it's own lid!  Hmm, I'll consider that as Plan B.  A Halloween bucket.  BINGO!  Thank you Jack-in-the-Box for putting your Kid's Meals in a Halloween bucket!  I preceded to put my plan into action.  She squatted into the bucket (which she thought was funny and yet disturbing at the same time).  Luckily I had a gallon of water on hand as well.  I rinsed the bucket out a few times and dumped it into the grass.  Mission accomplished.  I didn't have to unload the kids and I didn't run the risk of getting arrested.  I pat myself on the back for thinking so quickly.  Like I said before, there are no perks to traveling alone.

Needless to say, that bucket's not going anywhere.  She may be squatting in it again soon.  Hap-pee Halloween!