Cedar City Trip DISASTER!!!

Well this weekend was supposed to be a fun little trip. Brad's brother turns 40 this week so his wife was throwing him a "Surprise" birthday bbq. She had invited us so we thought what the heck, we can take a little trip down to Cedar city for the weekend. Yeah right! Well the trip started off good. Cooper did awesome on the drive down there. He slept for probably a good hour and a half. Then woke up with about an hour left. I crawled in the back seat and just played with him and read books and what not. We got into town and checked into the hotel. We got settled and headed over to Brad's brother's house. My sister-in-law had already spilled the beans about his bbq so we didn't have to make up an excuse for being in town. We went to dinner and then headed back to their house to hang out. Cooper had an amazing time crawling around and playing outside with his cousin Abel who is 18 months old. Cooper started to get a little fussy so we headed back to the hotel a little before ten. We got Cooper ready for bed and thought we could get to bed ourselves. YEAH RIGHT! Cooper would not go to bed. I tried putting him in his pack n' play. He would just stand up and scream. He is tall enough he can see right over the top. There really wasn't anywhere we could put the pack n' play where he couldn't see us. I tried turning the lights out and having him lay in bed with us. He was just all over the place and fussy. We really tried everything. Finally he fell asleep around midnight. We went straight to sleep too. I woke up at 3:00 am and was wide awake. Then Cooper woke up at 4:00 am and was up for the day. I tried feeding him, rocking him, bringing him to bed, etc. Nothing worked and he was so grumpy. He woke Brad up at 4:30. Then at 5:00 am we went and drove around for 30 min and he still wouldn't fall asleep. We got back to the hotel at 6:00 and decided to head to the continental breakfast since there was nothing else working. We were both exhausted!

We had made plans to go hiking with Brad's brother, wife Jamie, and Abel. We knew with the night we had that wouldn't be a good idea. I was soooo bummed. We had bought a hiking backpack and had planned it all out. The bbq was at 6:00 pm and we were going to have to be driving home after it. I had forgotten my sister was speaking in sacrament so we needed to be back to church at 9:00 am. We decided that with how tired we were it wasn't going to be smart driving home late that night in the dark. Cooper was grumpy and we knew he wasn't going to be getting any good naps. So we just decided the smart thing to do was head home. We didn't even get to do any of the things that were the whole reason for us going down there.

We were out of Cedar City by 7:00 am. That means that total we drove 7 hours (3 1/2 each way) for a short 12 hour stay in Cedar. I was sure Cooper would nap most of the way home. At least that is what I hoped because I needed to nap. Remember I was going on 3 hours of sleep and he had only slept 4 hours to his usual 12-13 hours. Well Cooper slept for 40 min and then was wide awake. He was okay for the first part of the trip. Then we hit Provo. He SCREAMED bloody murder all the way home from Provo. That is about an hour of constant screaming. I was in the back trying to comfort him but nothing worked. He just kept reaching out for me to grab him. It broke my heart. But we had to get home because we were all exhausted and needed our beds. We got home and finally after about an hour Cooper laid down and took a 4 1/2 hour nap. This allowed Brad and I to get a few hour nap in. Needless to say it was the biggest waste of time and money (hotel, gas, food) for a disaster of a trip. I am really nervous because in a few weeks we have Brad's family reunion and Cooper will be sleeping in the pack n' play again. I am going to start putting him down for naps in the pack n' play and hopefully he gets used to it. Otherwise I don't know what we will do at the reunion.

It might not sound like that bad of a night, but believe me Brad and I were exhausted, stressed, on edge from all the crying, and just flat out worn out! And to add to things......I left my phone charger at the hotel.

This is where he went when I tried to lay him on the bed