We're home and recovering from Christmas. No trip is really complete until a few people have gotten sick and have to spend days laying around watching TV. The trip as a whole was so full of blogable material that it's hard to know where to begin.....
We loaded enough electronic devices to power a Dallas suburb into our van. I'm not sure exactly how I managed to make it through family trips as a kid without a tablet, a gaming system and a phone, but the concept is terrifying to my children. Or maybe it's just that my parents had more tolerance for hearing, "are we there yet?" "I'm hungry", "I need to go potty", "I pooped", "tell him to stop touching me!". My mother scoffed when we first bought a car with a built in dvd player. She regaled us with stories of how they read and sang across country. I noticed that her van now sports three TV screens and a movie for the trip across town. No matter. The kids loved it and all wanted to pile in with Nana.
My amazing husband bought me a new phone before we left. It's fancy and I love it. Which means I'm super panicked about dropping or losing it. Which also means I do both more often.
Our first night in Arkansas, we gathered at my sister's house. 14 children, 7 adults. We were horribly outnumbered. The kids spent time marking out territory and testing boundaries. Yes. That toy is hers. No you may not pee outside. We're in town. Oh, yeah. It's dark. Go ahead. Yes. You need to eat your nachos. At least half of it. Fine. One bite. Just go play with your cousins. You can fill up on cookies later. And play they did. 14 children have an astounding scope of imagination. Later, they put on a nativity vignette with Christmas caroling. It included one of our adoptive hopefuls who owned his part by baaaing out his lines and crawling around on all fours for a good part of the rest of the night.
David's sister, Rachel came with us. She slept on the couch in the living room of the house that was graciously loaned to us. As it turns out, my children far preferred to wake her for their travel insomnia than knock on my door. Score! Everyone should take a teenager on family vacations. She got to deal with nose bleeds, sleep walking, thirsty kids, sniffles, and that one child who believes travel is an excellent excuse to start getting up at 4am. I got to catch a cold and spend my time trying to keep my entire brain from leaking out my nose.
We took the kids to a nature museum on Friday. They ran and played, enjoying the snakes and displays and a fishing game. We took a picnic lunch outside. The boys ducked around the trees and fed bits of their lunch to the geese in the pond. Then Devin waddled out from behind a tree. Yep. It was poop. The upside of it was that it put us in just the right place, once I'd cleaned him up, to watch volunteers feed a mouse to the rattlesnake. Later, I heard that Y and Drew had been hoping the mouse might escape. It was cuter than the snake, and therefore the snake was evil.
Later, in a move I blame entirely on cold meds, I found myself leaning against a red Firebird that was parked next to my bus in the McDonald's parking lot. Yes. We took the kids to Mc D's. In freezing temperatures, my little cavemen needed to wreck havoc in somewhere built for it. I needed ice cream mixed with m&ms. Everyone wins. I leaned on the driver's side door while chatting with my parents for about 10 minutes only to find out the teenager in the driver's seat was apparently texting about the whole experience. I apologized profusely to the girl who simply rolled her eyes and turned back to her phone. Defeated, I crawled into the bus for a quick getaway. After spending ten minutes polishing her window with my backside, she could at least have tossed me a quarter. As we pulled out of the parking lot, I looked back to find her pantomimng the story to a load of her friends who'd pulled up beside her. They laughed riotously at my expense. Smiling, I waved heartily as we passed by. Yes. It was me! I sat on your car. The crazy lady with a bus full of kids and her brain stuffed into a dozen kleenexes in her pocket.
By the way, they lady who took this picture really had an eye for.....placement. First picture in a long time of 'us girls' and I have a deer hat. I love family photos.
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