Road Trip Extravaganza, Part 1

This past Thursday we all got up bright an early to set out for Family Road Trip 2011 Extravaganza. I think by calling it a “Road Trip Extravaganza”, it makes it seem much more fun and exciting than just saying “come on kids, everyone in the van, we’re spending the next six days looking at Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas in 110 degree weather from the back windows of a grand caravan.”

It just doesn’t have the same sort of ring to it.

So just a forewarning, the next few posts will be Road Trip Recaps, complete with pictures that only I find interesting. I feel the need to have digital proof of our frugal “vacations” to show to our children’s therapist someday when they are whining about never getting to go to Disney World.

Where were we? Thursday, aka Day 1 of Road Trip Extravaganza. Destination: Temple, Texas, by way of Austin. What’s in Austin?

Better question is, who is in Austin?

GG, of course!

(this picture brings me untold joy)

We stopped at Casa de GG, mooched some lunch, and let the kids chase her dog and play with the little tea set that I used to play with when I was a kid.

We managed to get out of GG’s house having only broken one ceramic lemon. It’s considered a successful trip if only one or two a pieces of artificial fruit are destroyed. My aunt Mary and cousin Gretchen stopped by for a quick visit, then we were on the road again with our sights set on the glorious town of Temple, Texas.

Adrienne, Jeremy, and baby Laurel moved to Temple a couple of months ago, and we caught up with them at their house for some game playing, baby holding, and pizza eating.

Grammy and GranDoug even joined us for dinner. After dinner, we threw a couple of sleeping bags on the floor in Laurel’s room and hoped for the best. Yes, we put all four kids in the same room. It lasted for about 30 minutes before we had to move a very excited and sleepless Harper into our bed to fall asleep, before moving sleeping Harper back into the kid room till the morning. Unfortunately, Brandon joined them in the kid room at about 1 am when a very confused Harper woke up screaming and threatening to wake the entire house.

A brief few hours later, morning came and with it a few cousins...

We subjected all the kids to outdoors pictures in 100 degree heat, then to make it up to them, we spent the next couple of hours at a local splash pad.

Note to future Mandy: Splash pads are much more fun for little boys if you give them a couple of balloons to repeatedly fill with water and then pour all over each other.

Determined (apparently) to not spend more than one night in a city, we piled in the van after a picnic lunch, headed to MoMo and Pappy’s house in the north DFW area. Why? Because that’s where baby Nora was. Baby Nora, who I didn’t get a single picture of while we were in town. I would have had to put the baby down in order to pick up the camera, and that just wasn’t happening. I did manage to take this picture of Brandon with his homemade chocolate chip cookie-vanilla ice cream sandwich number that he concocted for dessert.

And a couple of shots of Grandma Betty with Harper girl.

Speaking of Harper girl, there’s a vicious rumor going around that Harper found the baby wipes and a clean diaper from her bag, laid down on the floor, and changed her own (poopy) diaper, complete with appropriate wiping. This is simply not true. Surely her mother would potty train a two year old girl who is obviously “ready” to be potty trained. She absolutely would not have changed her own diaper almost completely by herself while her mommy was feeding baby Nora. Vicious rumor.

At Press Time (aka Monday night), I can say that our little family road trip is going exceedingly well. Memories are being made. Family is being enjoyed. Bank is not being broken. I wouldn't trade this past week for anything. More later.