Our Trip to Texas ... probably Part 1

Wow - what a trip!  We were gone for a long long time.  We left June 15th and we got back on July 9th and it was sure an adventure.

We took three days to drive to Texas.  Andrew and Seth went in Grandpa's car and Logan and Noah drove with me (Amanda) and Grandma.  Grandpa had made fun books for the three older boys, and Andrew and Seth spent most of the trip trying to find all the license plates from all the states.  It turned into quite an adventure - stopping at all the rest stops and anytime we were in a parking lot trying to find each of the states.  They found almost all of them, except Rhode Island, South Dakota, Alaska, and Delaware - I think.  They also got to watch some movies on Grandma's phone.  Now, I didn't observe them, but they seemed to have fun and stay out of trouble, though that is hard to tell.  Our car went pretty well.  Logan watched movie after movie on the portable DVD player and Noah slept most of the time and was generally a pretty good sport when he was awake.  Grandma tried to keep the two happy with snacks and encouragement.

Day one of the drive was to Knoxville Tennessee.  We stopped after a while for some food and to get out for a bit.  We took our big stop in Asheville at the Western North Carolina Nature Center.  I had bought a membership pass there that would be good at the zoos, aquariums, and science centers.  It was hot, but we had fun walking around and seeing some of the animals.  Andrew and Seth had fun sketching some of the animals.  Logan had fun in the petting zoo and then we were off to the car to finish the rest of our drive.  Thankfully, driving through the mountains wasn't too bad.  In Knoxville, the hotel had free appetizers, which was quite substantial - popcorn, nuts, cheese, and crackers, sandwiches, chips and dips, all kinds of drinks.  We basically made that dinner, though my parents went to Kroger and picked up some fruit to supplement a bit.  Logan and I and Noah slept in one room, Andrew and Seth slept on the sofa bed and my parents were in the last room.  They enjoyed watching TV, but honestly, there is not much on cable for boys on during the evening.  Noah did not want to sleep in the pack and play, so I finally just laid him on the bed next to me.  I was paranoid he would fall off, so I didn't sleep well.  When I finally fell really asleep, he did fall off the bed, so I spent most of the trip sleeping on the floor next to him.  We did later figure out that he was getting a new tooth on the drive there which explained a lot of his grumpiness.

The second day, we drove across Tennessee the whole day.  We decided to go to the science museum in Nashville, the Adventure Science Center.  We didn't have exact directions there, so we stopped off a rest stop to figure it out.  Dad and the older boys got there just fine, but we got a little lost - we missed the turn and then got stuck on a one-way street behind the slowest train ever.  But we eventually found it.  This museum had a tower in the middle that had all kind of interactive exhibits, but a little too hard to take Noah along all the climbing.  But the older boys loved while I sat and read a Nano exhibit.  The exhibits were a little bit for older kids, so Logan was a little bored some of the time, but Andrew and Seth loved it.  Logan liked this one room that was almost completely black and you would hold onto a handrail and walk through the stars.  He wanted to do it over and over.  We all had Subway for lunch and as we were eating, I looked over and realized the Logan had a tick, presumably from the previous day.  After we finished another exhibit, we found some tweezers and spent quite a lot of time trying to get the tick off right behind his ear.  We finally did, and drove the rest of the way to our hotel.

The third day of driving was the worst.  We went to Little Rock for our excursion, but it was pretty early into the day because there is nothing to do after Little Rock all the way to Allen.  In Little Rock, we went to another science center, the Museum of Discovery.  This one was a lot of fun.  We started downstairs where the boys spent tons of time with one of those blowing chutes where you put in scarves and they blow different ways depending on which buttons you have pushed.  There was one like this in the Magic House, and the boys loved it.  We went and watched the tornado exhibit, but that one was apparently too scary for the boys.  It simulated what it would be like to experience a tornado from your cellar - just with sounds and looking out the window, but the boys were scared for days!  The upstairs had a fun little kid area.  Andrew kept trying to put on a play and recruiting others to his efforts while Noah had lots of fun on the slide.  They also had a cool exhibit area where you had to solve brain teasers and things that the boys loved.  We went and looked at more types of engineering exhibits, but finally had to drag the boys away.  The second hotel was fun with lots of food, too.  They had burgers (I think) and drinks and it was a lot of fun.  When we drove to the hotel, we had to move the car to a different parking lot.  Noah knew that we were going to get out and he threw an enormous fit when we had to drive back to the other parking lot.  He was so sad!  He really was a very good sport when we were driving and did much better than I expected.

The drive after that was a big mess.  The rain was really bad.  At times, we could not see at all - even with our flashers and everyone else's flashers on and there was no place to turn off.  It was really stressful, the whole drive through Texas.  So hard to see, the boys were unhappy, especially Noah, and then we couldn't find a bathroom for Logan.  There was a wreck or something so we got stuck in traffic and then we couldn't find the right road to get to Allen and had to turn around a few times.  When we finally got to somewhere to use the bathroom, it was a gross port a potty so my Mom wanted to go somewhere else, so we did, but then poor Logan had peed in his Pull-up, so much so that it leaked everywhere, and Noah had a poopy diaper and we had to change it while the rain was still pouring.  It was a mess and then there was nothing to eat when we got there!  But, we finally made it to Texas.  Finally.  Next post will be about our actual trip there.