The Car

As an autism mom, I am so grateful for this invention called a car.  I forget that it is a valuable asset sometimes. After all, if your kids are all in the car, you know where they are.  I've definitely had my own struggles with the car, i.e., Caiti's earlier Houdini acts of getting out of her seatbelt.  Also, Garrett pretty much thinks any time we get in the car that means we are going to get "fries and chicken" at McDonalds...which I have to blame myself for.  Ooops...
Anyway, today was a little crazy.  I could tell my kids were soooooo bored and hot.  I had put out our little swimming pool in the backyard and was using the hose to fill it up.  I stepped inside for a couple minutes, and when I got back outside, Garrett was sitting in the pool in his regular clothes and both Caiti and Jason were naked.  Yippeee...  Also, Caiti thought she should take control of the hose and make a huge mud puddle.  Soooo fun.  She and Jason were splashing around in the mud.  Let's just say, I wasn't in the mood, and I was disappointed that my brilliant idea of swimming didn't work how I imagined.  You'd think I'd be used to that and  expect that kind of thing.
I made them all come inside and clean off.  I couldn't find the window stopper that I use on the sliding glass door, so every time I turned around, another little naked bum would be heading back for the fun mud puddle.
That is when I remembered I had a car and could drive them far away from that temptation.  I didn't want to actually do anything but take them on a ride...I'm not crazy enough to take all three kids somewhere and actually do something by myself, but I thought maybe if I turned on some calming music and just drove around in pretty San Diego, we would all feel much calmer.  Yes, this was mostly so I would feel much calmer.

We ended up driving to the San Diego temple.  I love it.  It is so pretty and peaceful.  We drove around San Diego for 2 hours, and I tried not to think about how much money in gas I was using.  I was just glad to have them all in one place, feeling happy...especially when they got their "chicken and fries."