Traffic n Poop

My family and I are back from another mini VayCay. This time around we went to Palm Springs, and stayed at the Embassy Suites. The drive down however was a piece of work in and of itself. We had 203 miles to travel to get to our destination. We figured with traffic maybe 5 hours. So we load the car and head for the freeway. Meanwhile in the middle of California there was a major mudslide that shut down I-5; the major travel artery into the Los Angeles basin. It had been shut down for a whole day at this point, and all of the truck (and car) traffic had been rerouted to 101 to get to L.A.
  So we cruise up the road heading to the on-ramp, impressed that the accident that was here 30 minutes ago has already been cleared! We fly down the on ramp only to see that traffic had already screeched to a halt. We creep through our little city for over an hour! It was seriously The. Longest. Hour. Ever. As we moved on outside the city limits it finally cleared a little bit. We moved along for the next 20 or 30 minutes tops until we came to a stop again. I checked my phone (since I wasn't moving) and saw that the 101 freeway was closed! I am pretty sure I was the ONLY person who knew this important morsel of info. And then the kids and the hubby woke up. They were shocked and dismayed that they had been asleep for almost 2 hours and we were barely 45 miles from our start point. My youngest son was the first one to start. Mom, I have to poop really bad! Really bad mom! I have to go sssoooooo bad. So off the freeway we went in hunt of a bathroom. 15 minutes later we are back on the freeway sitting in traffic. We finally got to the junction off the 101, and actually cruised along at 50 mph for awhile. As soon as we moved onto the 210 we came to a baby crawl speed again. And we crawled for a couple more hours. Again my littlest one: mom I have to poop so bad again! Please stop I have to go poop! So off the freeway we go again. Now everyone is hungry, grumpy and tired. The hubby grabs some snacks, which includes 2 chocolate shakes. Ugh. Purchased while I was with the pooper of course. Back in the car, back on the road. A few minutes of happy silence goes by, until I hear the little one: oh no! My shake!! The hubs turns around to see my little one with milkshake down his side and into his car seat. Now he is crying because he doesn't want to sit in shake. I honestly couldn't  blame him. He finally realizes he is gonna be sitting in it for awhile, and got over it. We finally resorted to bribery with our oldest because this was not our shining moment as parents. He would earn himself 20 bucks in exchange for silence. It worked for awhile, but apparently when your not talking your thinking. And he was thinking about how long we had been in the car, and how much pool time he was missing. This was devastating to him and he ended up bawling in the back seat, as I tried to convince him for the 80th time that "we are almost there". His little brother tried to comfort him for a minute, but even he was annoyed. He started with " its OK brother " to "why you still cry? Can you stop now?" As we reached the 8th hour of our 3.5 hour trip we were all glad to be distracted by the lightening show that was on display in the desert sky. The traffic had cleared up, and of course we missed our exit to last leg of our journey. So we took the next exit and followed our Google maps directions to take us the long way through the city to get back on the highway to take us to our destination. Of course is started downpouring, so we couldn't read the road signs, but we made it finally to our mini VayCay.