Thanks to Lolli and Pop driving to Texas to visit us this summer, our normal grandparent triangle was just an out and back to Missouri. On Friday, July 20th, we packed up the car right after work, fetched the kids directly from school, and drove to Texarkana. We overnighted there (big fun for the kids since they LOVE hotels), and then drove the rest of the way to Missouri the next day.

Big kids in a big bed

Here’s how it was supposed to work. We’d have dinner later than normal and then have the kids do a bathroom break before we left the restaurant. They would drift off to sleep an hour or so into the drive and then just snooze till we arrived around midnight. But Maya and Ian were really excited to see Grammy and Grandpa, and they were really excited about staying in a hotel, and they were really not interested in sleeping at all. They had barely slept by the time we pulled into the hotel parking lot. And then they were so excited to get to sleep in a big bed together that it took a bit for them to fall asleep once we finally got settled into our room.

The next morning Maya woke up at 7:00. And then she woke Ian. And then they both woke Sean, all before our alarm went off at 8:00. The hotel breakfast was solid and we were on the road by about 9:30. The drive was uneventful, and we made it into Friedheim before 5p, leaving plenty of time for the kids to run off their energy before bedtime.

Getting ready to ride in the mule

Grammy and Grandpa’s house is a kids’ paradise. They had water balloons, water guns, and bubble generating devices. They had play dough and kinetic sand and sun catchers for the kids to paint. There are toys tucked away all over the house. And there are two grandparents willing to spend time with them play, play, playing. And as if all that weren’t enough, their cousins Lily and Nathan were there to play with as well.

Feeding fish (and turtles)

In the evenings, we’d ride the mule (it’s like a little tractor … sort of …the internet calls it a utility vehicle, which seems kind of vague, but whatever) out to feed the fish and turtles in the pond. Maya loves it when Grandpa drives crazy in the mule. Ian was brave and rode along this time too and also seemed to really enjoy it.

Time-optimized water balloon filling

Their water balloon system is really neat. You screw a central ring onto the water spigot and it feeds water down to a number of balloons, filling them with water. When they’re heavy enough, the balloons drop down, already sealed and ready to go. Maya would have plowed through the whole package in one night … Grammy and Grandpa managed to dole them out over three nights.

Maya and Nathan

Sunday afternoon, we went to a park to play for a while. Maya rode on the zipline and loved it. Ian tried it out. He slipped off of it, but did a fantastic job of staying upright. Still, he was finished with it after that and needed some comforting before he was ready to go back to playing. Luckily, there was a sandbox with a sort of waterfall in the middle of it. Ian had all kinds of fun making cakes out of the wet sand. He also got Grammy and I to go down the big slide with him over and over again.

Ian and Lily, singing along to the Frozen soundtrack

After that, we drove over to Grayson’s Bar and Grill, the bar known as “Someplace Else” when I was a kid, and sat out of the deck and ate brats and burgers and chicken fingers and wings and listened to Lily and Ian sing songs from Frozen. The weather was so nice. It wasn’t a hundred degrees! It actually cooled off when the sun went down! Sitting outside was a pleasure instead of something to be endured.

Great Grandma!

Monday was a big day. In the morning, we went and saw Great Grandma Schmidt for a while. “We call her ‘great grandma’ because she’s great!” Maya explained. After visiting for a while and doling out hugs, we had a quick lunch at Pizza Hut and a little bit of play time around the house before gearing up for the next adventure: playing at the creek.

Maya, being Maya, was all in. We had barely gotten to the creek before she was waist-deep in water, collecting random leaves and shells and sticks she found. Ian didn’t want to put on his swim clothes, but we brought them along just in case. Sure enough, Maya wasn’t in the water long before Ian decided to change into his trunks and join her. And then, since Maya and Ian had both been so brave, even Lily made her way into the creek, which we hear is kind of a rare thing. Nathan wasn’t feeling well and actually curled up on a lawn chair and went to sleep, poor guy.

Playing at the creek

They saw some tadpoles. Maya and Lily made an Olaf-esque man out of wet sand and then despaired at his “melting.” Ian made a whole big bucketful of “chocolate” using only water and sand. Maya and Ian each collected up a handful of rocks and shells that they referred to as their “creek treasures.” I think playing in and around the creek was probably the highlight of their trip.

I wound up working part of the day on Monday and part of the day on Tuesday, so I didn’t see a whole lot of the goings on. There’s so much to do, I am sure the kids kept busy. Throughout the day on Tuesday, we worked toward gathering up our things and getting the car packed for the return trip. That afternoon, we saw my childhood friend Becky and her daughter Iris. Becky sent us on our way with fresh cucumbers from her garden and some homemade relish that Maya has decided she loves.

During this entire trip, Maya had been playing with a doll that she named Butterfly after the butterfly on its shirt. As we were packing, I heard her saying bye to Butterfly and letting her know that she’d see her again around Christmas time.

The last mule ride

After dinner with Grammy and Grandpa, we finished loading up the car and headed on our way back to Texas. On Tuesday night, our stopover way in Little Rock. This time, Sean’s and my plan worked flawlessly (a rarity for us). By around 8 o’clock, both kids were conked out and they didn’t really wake up till we got to the hotel around midnight. They walked themselves up to the room without complaint and then promptly crawled into bed and went back to sleep.

For reasons I will never understand, I woke up hard at 6:30 the next morning. I read for a while as Sean snored and the kids continued sleeping. After a while, I hear Maya’s quiet morning voice say to Ian, “It’s ok Ian. That noise is just Dad.”

After another respectable hotel breakfast, we loaded up and headed toward Texas. It was an uneventful drive home, and we arrived a little after 6 that evening. Everyone was tired, but we got the car unloaded and saw all the cats and everyone seemed to be doing ok. Nox has evidently learned how to close doors and had shut herself in Ian’s room. She must not have been there for long though because she left no messes and her chief concern on being freed was to make sure we all smelled ok.

I think breaking up the drive was probably better for all of us. Our days of powering through a 12-13 hour drive may be over till the kids are a bit older. One interesting thing about this car trip was how relatively little the kids relied on their ipads. So far, we’ve been making our way through long car trips with a mixture of snacks, activities, and unfettered ipad time. This time though, they really weren’t as interested in their ipads. At one point, Maya even told us she just wanted to look out the window. The drive is long, for sure, but I bet if we asked the kids if they wanted to make the long drive again to go see Grammy and Grandpa, we’d get an unqualified YES.