Last Leg of our Family Road Trip

On Thursday morning we left Missouri and began our long journey home. I would have loved to have extended our vacation and explored more on the way home, but unfortunately our finances didn't agree. We didn't get a picture with the Kansas sign, as it is smack dab in the middle of a very busy freeway.  Nor did we get one going into Colorado, because we just happened to completely miss it.

I have always heard how boring Kansas is, but I actually really like driving through the Flint Hills area and would have loved to get off of the highway and check it out more.  Also, we saw many signs advertizing the Wizard of Oz museum that might have been fun to visit.  We found a few places in every state that we would like to visit, so maybe another road trip with these sites will be in our future!

Our first run in with traffic since leaving California was in Denver, Colorado.  Of course, it still was very light in comparison to what we are used to.

Because we left Missouri so much earlier than planned, we didn't have a hotel reserved.  When we arrived in Denver (hungry & tired), we found out that every single hotel/motel was sold out due to various events being held (races, concert & convention).  After driving around for an hour and checking out hotel after hotel, we finally found the most amazing/cute hotel to stay at http://www.affordableinns.com/rentals/denver-west---wheat-ridge-0/.  We took their very last available room, which was for people with pets, so it smelled a bit like dog, but I prefer that over cigarette smells.  The kids immediately got ready for the pool, while I picked up Taco Bell that we ate in the picnic/BBQ area next to the pool.

Colorado was much cooler than anywhere else we had been and the kids were purple by the time they got out of the pool.  While Wayne did a few more laps and talked with another guest, the kids all jumped into a hot shower.  Once they were warm, it was time to put on their jammies and go to sleep.

We drove through the beautiful Rocky Mountains and were so thankful to have missed a 2 hour delay by only 15 minutes.  Turns out they close the main road down everyday for a couple of hours to work on a new tunnel being built.

We stopped in Vail, CO for a few minutes to stretch our legs.  How can you not stop in Vail!?!?  Such a pretty place.  I had to wake Kya up and as you can see by her expression, she was not a happy camper.

The one crazy thing I noticed was a tiny infant (maybe one month old) laying on the ground with no one but a 2 year old watching her.  I did see an elderly lady kind of watching over them, but it was clear she didn't know them.  I took the girls to the restroom and when I came out the mother had returned and was strapping the baby back into her sling.  Nuts I tell you!

Loved this view.  The Colorado River, Rocky Mountain and Gondola's.

Standing on a bridge with the Colorado River flowing behind them

We would have loved to have hiked through the Wetlands!

After getting lost in Grand Junction, Co and stopping at a horse facility to get directions back to the highway, we stopped for lunch and left Colorado. We both agree that if we should ever leave California, Colorado would be the perfect place to live.

Entering Utah!

Where we saw lots and lots of this

Seth ended up getting pink eye and so we stopped off near St. George in search of a Walgreens to get some eye drops to at least ease the itch until we could get home and get a prescription.  While there, we stopped at a hamburger joint that offered a "Family Meal".  One thing I loved about Utah, was that a "family meal" means it is actually for more than 4 people (I think this served 5), the order of fries could have easily served 10 people and the booth was large enough to accommodate 8 people (4 on each side)!!!

Entering Nevada and one step closer to home!

On the side of the road here in Nevada, I had the kids change into their pj's and got their blankets/pillows out in hopes they would sleep the rest of the way home.  It worked!  They were all sound asleep within 10 minutes and stayed that way until we pulled up in our drive way at 1am.

Just after we passed through Las Vegas, NV between CA State Line we drove through a huge lightening & rain storm.  Turns out about 30 minutes later the road was closed for a bit due to flooding.  So thankful we didn't get stuck.  As always, God was so good to us on this trip!

Family Road Trip ~ Part 3

We finally made it to Missouri! A few hours later than we had originally hoped/planned for, but we did make it. It was dark when we passed the Missouri state sign, so no pictures.  Our time in Missouri was not quite as we had hoped it would be though.  After many years of the family begging us to come back there, it turned out that the only week we had available, was a bad week for everyone else.  They were either out of town themselves, busy with work or just couldn't take 10 minutes out of there day to visit with us.

We didn't pre plan too many activities, as we had hoped to mainly be seeing family, but I was really looking forward to seeing the Amish and visiting Branson for my birthday.  Here is a break down of what we did do. 
Monday:  Went down to the lake for lunch and to visit Uncle Johnny's grave site.  We had hoped to play in the lake, but it turned out that there is no public access.  You must own or rent a cabin on the lake.  Crazy huh!?!?
Tuesday: I dropped Wayne and the kids off at the park to play, while I went to the library to research Branson and then to the grocery store to get food for the week.  This is the day that we realized that a young family was way too much for Wayne's 89 year aunt that we were staying with and all plans went out the window.
Wednesday: We decided to leave.  After contacting a few family members and finding out that not many were available, we thought we would just start driving home.  Luckily, Wayne's cousins were available and invited us over for dinner and to stay the night.
Thursday:  We woke up and had breakfast and started our journey home.

Sounds like a fun vacation huh? LOL  Although we didn't get to do all that we wanted to and more than likely won't be going back to Missouri in the future, we did have a great time being together as a family and now know that we do great on road trips.

With Aunt Aleen at Uncle Johnny's grave site.  Their eldest son is also buried here. Wayne wasn't able to attend Uncle Johnny's funeral, so this was a great way to get some closure.

Elsie wanted a pictures with these fake flowers.  I have no idea who the person is buried here.

Cousin Tom & Sherry.  Thankful for their hospitality and had it not been for mine and Seth's reaction to their 4 cats, we would have gladly stayed here longer.

We spent the evening listening and dancing to Sherry playing the keyboard.  It is truly one of her great passion's.

Seth had no desire to dance, but he did enjoy watching Sherry play.

The girls on the other hand could have danced the entire night!

Family Road Trip ~ Part 2

The second day of our trip was pretty much like the first...lots of driving! We woke up and took advantage of the hot breakfast in the hotel lounge before showering and hitting the road again. We continued our drive through New Mexico before coming to the pan handle portion of Texas.

The only exciting adventure in Texas was driving through a thunder and lightening storm.  I also believe Texas is where we stopped to eat our lunch at a truck stop.  Not too exciting eh? 

Now getting a picture with the Oklahoma sign was quite an adventure.  We didn't see it until we had passed it a short ways and I yelled for Wayne to stop.  The kids and I had to hike it a few hundred yards through tall, dry grass and thousands of locusts.  Two of them hit Seth in the face, one being his eye and our legs were a bit scratched up and itchy, but it was well worth it!  Then Wayne thought he would be nice and back up to get us and ended up running into/over a post.  The post bent all the way over and our van now has a scratched up rear end, reminding us of our trip.

With the freeways being a bit different than in California, we got a teeny bit lost before finally finding our hotel. Once we checked in, we headed to downtown Oklahoma City and ate another gross dinner from McDonald's. I would have liked to walk around some, as the town seemed quite fun, but we had to get up early the next morning. The hotel had no pool, so we just relaxed by watching tv shows on their cable (something we don't have at home). 

The next morning we got ready for church and headed to Tuttle, OK for church.  Some friends who used to live in CA, but now live in OK were able to get Wayne in to lead worship at their current church.  Although the people were very nice, the church is not what we expected out of a small town.  We had anticipated lots of cowboy boots & hats and instead found most people dressed in casual, laid back CA style clothes, the pastor wore loafers with no socks and the worship leader said he didn't even like country music.  What!??!  It felt like we were at Saddleback church in Orange County, CA.  Ha ha!

Even though there were no cowboys to be seen, there were plenty of gentlemen.  It was pouring rain and when we pulled into the gravel parking lot, I noticed that all the men were dropping off their wives & children off at the front door before finding a parking spot.  Wayne on the other hand just pulled into a parking spot expecting us to get wet!  Ha ha.  I said "well, you sure can tell the difference between a CA guy and an OK guy by how they treat their women"  He immediately drove around and dropped us off in front of the door, while another man came up with a large umbrella and escorted the kids and I in.  Loved it!

We happened to be in Oklahoma just a couple of weeks after the Moore, OK tornado.  Although we didn't go into Moore, it was quite an eye opening experience to see debris over 20 miles from there just lying on the ground next to the highway.  Tuttle is the next town over, so we did see a few buildings that were partially torn apart.  I can't even imagine what it would  have been like to actually have visited Moore and even more so, what it would have been like to live through such a natural disaster.  Just so sad.

One thing Seth loved, they threw a birthday party just for him!  Okay, not really, but it was Seth's 7th birthday and the children's church was having a party, but it was actually for Jesus.

After church, our friends took us out to eat at a local pizza joint.  We were the only people in there for a couple of hours, which was a good thing, because the kids had lot of energy!  We celebrated Seth's birthday a bit more by letting him open his present.

He got the watch I saw him eying at Bass Pro Shop.  Now he just has to learn to tell time!

After filling our bellies and having a nice long afternoon catching up with old friends, it was time to hit the road again.  Only, Elsie left her baby doll at the church, so we had to head back there to retrieve it.  Luckily, Bill had the keys to get us inside!

Next time, I will journal about our time in Missouri.

Family Road Trip - Day 1

Wayne's mom & dad are originally from Missouri, so naturally has a lot of family still living there. The last time we went back there, I was 7 months pregnant with Kya, so needless to say it was time to go back.  The kids were especially excited, because they have never been out of California and now they were about to add 9 more states to that count.

Wayne and I woke up at 1:30am to shower and hoped to be out of the house by 2:00am.  Of course, things don't always go as plan and we didn't leave until 2:30am, which really isn't all that much later.  But then 15 minutes down the road, just as we were about to get on the freeway, he remembers he forgot his wallet.  So we turned around to head home and get it and were finally on our way by 3:00am.  Thankfully he remembered 15 minutes in versus a few hours.

About 6:30am we crossed over into our first state, Arizona.  We thought it would be fun to document our trip by taking pictures with each state's sign.

Our first stop was in Kingman, AZ for gas and breakfast. We have always heard good things about Cracker Barrel, so we decided that would be a great place to have breakfast. We were not disappointed! The food was delicious homemade style, the prices were cheap, the service was amazing, the people were the nicest I have ever encountered and the restaurant and attached general store was super cute. There was definitely a few things I would have like to purchase for my home there.

I loved the large porch filled with southern style rocking chairs and checker board games.  If they ever get a waiting line, these are a great way to kill the time waiting.

Hanging out in their famous rocking chairs.  Oh, how I wished we had a Cracker Barrel in CA near us!

After breakfast and playing a few games of checkers while Wayne made some phone calls, we hit the road again. At this time I brought out the snack bags I had made for the kids and bags of entertainment (bible activity books, crayons, tic-tac-toe, bingo, etc).  As we drove, Wayne and I checked out some of the beautiful county side and even found a few towns in AZ that we wouldn't mind living in.  Who knew that Arizona had such a country flair!?!?

After a long day of driving, we finally entered into New Mexico.  Wayne thought I was nuts for making us pull over for each sign, until two other vehicles did the same thing in NM.   Ha ha!

We had big plans when we got to Albuquerque, like checking out Old Town, getting a traditional NM dinner and climbing up to check out the Petroglyphs.  Unfortunately, we were so tired and the kids had so much energy to burn, that we chose to stay at our hotel.  The kids literally bounced from bed to bed, as this was their first time in a hotel and having been in a van for 13 hours they had LOTS of energy to burn.

All Kya talked about the entire trip was how she couldn't wait to get to New Mexico and go swimming in a hotel pool....she last all of 10 minutes before she was freezing and ready to get out.  Ha ha!  So while the others swam, she and I headed out to pick up McDonald's, which we ate poolside before heading into the showers and bed.

Stayed tuned for day 2 of our family road trip!

Seth's 7th Soccer Themed Birthday Party

We had Seth's birthday party a week early, because we are going to be on vacation on his actual birthday. For this year's theme, he chose Soccer. The invitation said to wear your soccer uniform shirt if you had one.  It was fun to see so many soccer shirt styles and colors.

Our big almost 7 year old posing in front of the soccer ball candy, birthday sign and party favors.  The party favors were water bottles that I then decorated with a vinyl soccer ball and the kids name.  Thank you Silhouette!

Hanging out with cousin Erica before the other guests arrived.  Erica flew in from Colorado the night before and stayed the night with us.  What a special treat!

Looking like a soccer party is about to happen!

Thanks to Pinterest, we have a few soccer themed games to play.  Some were a hit and some were a fail.  Here Karli is moving the ball thru/around the water bottles and then running it back to her teammate.

No pictures of us playing soccer bowl, but you can see the water bottles set up in the back ground.  Here we are playing "headers" with beach balls.  This game was a total fail, as the balls would just fall the ground and there really was no way to keep them up.

The winners with their trophy's!  It started out as girls vs. boys, but the slowly we lost over half of our girl team.  So the only two that stuck it out got trophy's too.

Pinata time!  I thought it kind of ironic/weird that the kids were hitting a soccer ball with a baseball bat.

Grace showing off her loot.  Instead of giving the kids baggies, I just had them fill up their water bottles with the candy.  This was also a great way to keep any one kid from taking all the candy, leaving the others with only a few pieces, even though I must say with this group, that wouldn't have happened anyways.

Present time!  Seth got some really great gifts, including riding gloves, which he has wanted for almost a year!

Make a wish!