Arkansas Trip - Part 3

Tuesday night of our trip we squeezed in some time to visit with Aunt Deb and Cousin Emily. They live in Mountain Home and had to work most of the time we were there. Since they live only minutes from the hospice we headed over to their house after we spent a really good 3 hours or so with Grandma in the afternoon. Because we were in such different surroundings and had spent all day at the hospice neither kid had napped. While Big Boy was fine, Boopy fell asleep the minute she was put in the car and the sun went down when we left the hospice. Mind you it was already after 6:oo pm MST and had been raining all day with not so fun thunder and lightning storms that really made Guya jump out of her skin. Needless to say, we made it to Aunt Deb, Uncle Mike and Emily's house where we stayed for about an hour. Boopy slept on their couch the entire time. Big Boy on the other hand made himself right at home, eating an apple and playing with their dog, Scout.

Big Boy & Emily

Emily & Aunt Deb

One problem with road trips and not wanting to bother with the kids inflatable beds each night is that you find yourself having to sleep in between these two crazy sleepers! You're welcome to try it the next time any of you come to visit!

We started our journey home Wednesday morning after a brief stop to say goodbye to Grandma. While it wasn't easy, knowing that this would be the last time we saw her alive, we were so grateful to have made the trip out and be able to spend such quality time with her.

As an effort to make this an educational trip, we tried to introduce the kids to all the wildlife. In Arizona we saw the dinosaurs, New Mexico brought cows, including one dead on the interstate nowhere near a cow pasture, in Oklahoma we saw a dead chicken on the road (I suppose he was trying to cross the street - HaHa - I crack myself up!) and in Arkansas we had the pleasure of meeting an armadillo. And while I should be embarrassed to tell you that we purposefully turned around to get a picture of it, Big Boy did have to go to the bathroom, so a stop on the side of the road for his potty stop was warranted. The armadillo was just a bonus! :)

Cool sky picture that Big Boy took from the back seat.

Ahh..the excitement of calling 911. While taking the only real nap during the trip, Guya had some excitement. She was driving along in Oklahoma and on the opposite side of the interstate she saw these small fires sporadically burning with no one around. At the third fire she woke me up. I snapped the quick picture below. We could actually see the flames. Since it didn't appear to be a "controlled" fire, I pulled out my phone and called 911. There were apparently other "do-gooders" out there that had also called already. Someone had been driving along heading east, pulling over and randomly starting fires. Not cool at all. Guya got to thinking that yes, she had seen a car pull away from the first fire she noticed but initially didn't think much of it. We're glad we tried to help and hopefully they were able to put them out before they caused major damage. It certainly added some excitement to our trip!

Random cute kids pics - they really rode along so well.

Ah..the fun of road trips includes the ever changing scenery. Most of Texas and New Mexico I didn't bother taking pictures. Although the pan handle of Texas is very clean and nice in appearance, there just wasn't much in the way of fun picture scenery. Although Wednesday night as we neared the New Mexico border, somewhere west of Wildorado, Texas there is a strange large number of red lights to the north of interstate 40. They all flash on and off at the same time and look to stretch at least a mile. The real bizarre part is that we haven't found anything to explain what these are for. There is no town nearby and they are randomly placed where it doesn't make sense to be an airport of some kind. Who knows, there are some weird people out there - for all we know it could be some lonely farmer trying to communicate with aliens. They do tend to have a lot of those circular farming fields out there that look strange from the sky - not something we're real used to out in the central valley of California.

Aside from the strange lights, we've decided we really didn't like New Mexico and wanted out of there as fast as we could. Especially given the fact that we nearly hit a couple of deer leaping across the road both in front and in back of us! Then later on, we had a coyote sprint in front of us nearly at midnight as we approached Albuquerque.

Arizona brought us some scenery changes worth photographing. The first one is the snow capped mountain as we neared Flagstaff. Quite strange really going from hot desert to pine trees and snow in a matter of minutes. I'm not sure the northern part of Arizona knows what kind of state it wants to be. But then I guess I could say the same for the extreme differences within California.

You can't consider it a good road trip unless you've seen some petrified wood. Exciting! Even more exiting is the abandoned school bus at the edge of the ledge.

One of the joys of being an older sister is convincing your younger sister to do very silly stuff. We, okay me, didn't properly pay attention to "Madge" our GPS and ended up directing us WAY off the interstate heading towards the Grand Canyon to get gas, fearing that there wouldn't be many more gas stops before we'd run out. We did find this "lovely" gas station that according to Guya could have been the muse for many horror movies. They did have this great statue though that I just couldn't resist not having a picture of! What a great sister to pose for me!

The picture below is the western end of Arizona, getting near the Hoover Dam and entry to Nevada. A happy sight nearing the end of a long journey.

That is until we get to this....major stopped traffic waiting to cross the Hoover Dam. It took us nearly an hour to get through this. Of course traffic heading the opposite direction was nonexistent.

So what do you do to entertain yourself and two little ones while stuck in traffic? You start with playing with the automatic window controls....up....down...up...down....oh! maybe trying it with my foot might be fun.

Then you play with the camera and setting sun.

Not thrilled with the limited angles and the uncooperative subjects, you try something new. Ahhhh! Let's see who can make the silliest face!

Here's Big Boy's try....he got bored after this one and went back to watching a movie.

Here are a couple of Boopy's tries.

Guya did some really great ones, but I know she'd kill me if I posted them, although I just had to post this one.

To be fair, here's one of my crazy faces. Not too creative but crazy. I think I look a bit like a donkey. Not sure why, I just do.

Soon after crossing the Dam we saw the beautiful sunset off in the horizon as we headed in to Las Vegas to Guya's house for the night.

Friday morning, we had a nice breakfast and then caravaned with Guya and Uncle D home to Fresno. They were coming back with us for Guya to help host a bridal shower for a good friend of hers and for Uncle D to get some kid time and just hang out. We got home close to 7 in the evening and were so glad to be done. Although, Saturday brought two showers for me, the bridal shower and a baby shower to attend, then dyeing Easter eggs in preparation for Easter the next day, which is yet another post all to itself.

Arkansas Trip - Part 2

Quick Edit to Part 1 - or better yet "Lesson on Acquiring Hotel Rooms"

I realized that I did not include a valuable lesson learned in my earlier post from the first part of our drive to Arkansas. Our first hotel stay in Albuquerque, proved to be fitness training for Guya and me. We arrived late, after 11:00 pm and Guya went into the Hampton Inn we found to get a room. They were pretty booked but told her they had one double bed room left we could have. We parted and then managed to load ourselves up with sleeping kids, backpacks, beloved blankets and suitcases to keep from having to make a second trip. We thought we were being smart. HaHa! We stumbled into the hotel, nearly dropping a kid or two, dropped the big suitcase which I managed to squat down just enough to grab the handle and put it back upright. The real trick wasn't the squatting is was keeping from peeing my pants since we were laughing at ourselves so hard and REALLY had to pee! I'm sure any outsider would have sworn we were drunk. So after picking up the suitcase we made it to the elevator, up 3 floors and to our room. Ahhh...we were going to rest...that is until we saw the trash on the floor and obvious uncleaned room. We nearly cried. By now the kids were awake and the thought of lugging everything back down made us miserable. Guya took the easy job and went back down to get another room. Miraculously they found another double bed room (hmmm....makes you wonder, huh?) and we gathered our stuff and went up another floor to a clean room. This room was better even if the toilet took two flushes to do anything and the sink didn't drain right.

So, lesson learned - check the hotel room BEFORE lugging everything out of the car and to the room!

Part 2

Upon arriving in Mountain Home, Monday morning, Aunt Kim guided us to the Hospice Home to visit Grandma Carol. The hospice center is fairly new and staffed with some of the nicest most hospitable people I've met. They have a family room stocked with a refrigerator, vending machines, microwave, tables, chairs, couches, two TVs, kid play area, collection of reading material and even a computer with Internet access! We spent some good quality time with Grandma that first afternoon until we could tell we were wearing her out. Around 3:oo pm or so Aunt Kim and Cousin Laurie (who was visiting from Illinois) led us to our hotel to drop off our stuff and we then followed them on to grandma's house to have dinner, hang out and visit with everyone.

The nurses were so sweet to bring in a couple of baby dolls for Boopy to play with. She enjoyed sharing them with Grandma.

Lots of love for Grandma.

Great picture of Grandma! Not taken by me but by Big Boy! Although I did have to do a bit of cropping, he's getting pretty good with my camera!

The kids really enjoyed the play area. They had it all to themselves the whole time we were there. We even took the legos into Grandma's room for them to play with while we visited.

Big Boy and Aunt Kim do some bonding.

Back at Grandma's house, Monday evening. Grandpa Frank had put in these crazy monkey weather veins in their front yard that has become the trademark for the house. Boopy really loved getting to check out the monkeys.

Uncle Tim scored big points when he pulled out two boxes of matchbox cars for the kids to play with! I think he had nearly as much fun as the kids!

Hanging out with Laurie & Aunt Kim at Grandma's house.

There's nothing more fun than making Boopy have a crazy face! At least she loves her Aunt Guya enough to let her torture her!

After a rousing game of attack Uncle Tim, the kids were rewarded by homemade chocolate milkshakes. I think they ended up being a bit more like chocolate milk when Big Boy poured a little too much milk in the mixer. Regardless, they enjoyed them!

Tuesday morning brought a little bit of excitement to our stay in Mountain Home. While getting ready in the morning to go to see Grandma, the fire alarm went off in the hotel. I stuck my head out the door and asked some hotel employees who happened to be in the hallway if the alarm was real. I told Guya and I don't think I've seen her ever get dressed that fast! Guya grabbed Big Boy, his shoes and the diaper bag while I grabbed Boopy, her blanket, the camera bag and purses. We literally ran down the stairs not sure what to expect when we got down to the lobby. We were ushered outside with the everyone else. Actually everyone else only ended up being hotel employees. All the other guests apparently had decided to stay in the rooms and wait for smoke before they believed the alarm. Needless to say, we enjoyed a nice adrenaline rush just to be told to it was safe to return to our room. There indeed was no fire but the sprinkler system had a pipe burst or some storm water had gotten in and triggered the alarm. Better safe than sorry though - especially with the little ones. At least the alarm didn't phase the kids, they just went along for the ride. Either they are really easy going or they're just used to Mama & Auntie "Guya" acting slightly crazy. Perhaps a little bit of both!

After our hotel excitement, we checked out of the hotel, assuring them it had nothing to do with the alarm, it was just that our Uncle invited us to save the cash and stay with the family at Grandma's house. We loaded our stuff in the car, in the pouring rain and headed down to see Grandma. Grandma had had a rough morning so far so after only 5 minutes it was obvious she needed to rest so we went to the family room to hang out for a while. In our down time while Grandma was resting we enjoyed visited with Aunt Deb, Aunt Kim, Cousin Laurie. This was taken Tuesday afternoon, just before Aunt Kim & Laurie had to leave. It was nice that our visits overlapped. With everyone living all over the United States we rarely ever see each other in person. It was also during this time that we had some good heart to hearts with our parents and encouraged them to go ahead and come out now to assure a quality goodbye with Grandma. Based on her status and recommendations from the nurses, there was not question that if Dad wanted to visit with Grandma while she wasn't sedated he needed to come soon. It didn't take Dad to book a ticket for him and Mom into Tulsa, OK for the next night. (Mountain Home isn't really near any airports and is only 4 hours from Tulsa or Little Rock)

Aunt Deb, Aunt Kim, Big Boy, Laurie, Guya, Boopy

Arkansas Trip - Part 1

Wow, it sure has taken me a while to sit down and finally blog about our trip last week. Because I have so many pictures to share and stories to tell, I'm piecing the trip out in three parts. So, let's begin!

Friday, March 14th, I was able to leave work early, snag the kids and be on the road by 3:30 rather then 5, which put us in Las Vegas at a much more reasonable time of 10:30 pm versus 12 or 1 in the morning. And yes, that does seem like a longer drive than the actual 6 hour time frame, but with two little ones by yourself, two breaks with getting everyone out of the car is definitely needed. Besides, it never fails that 20 minutes prior to the time and place you plan on stopping, Big Boy declares he needs to go to the bathroom. Considering he's four and does pretty good about not having accidents, you can't really fairly make the poor kid wait another 20 minutes.

After getting myself absurdly lost, 5 minutes from my sister's house in Vegas we arrived to unload, unwind and get some rest before the much longer drive the next day. And before you ask how I managed to get lost seeing that I had the use of my work's GPS system, I must inform you that my sister's house is just a bit newer than the GPS software so it could get me to North Las Vegas but not directly to her home. The GPS by the way - we loved! For the most part it worked great, letting us know if there were hotels/food/gas in the next town and the expected time frame to get to our arrival destination. It even recalculated the time after our pit stops for gas or bathroom breaks. We did incidentally name her "Madge" figuring that sounded like a proper British name since we changed the voice to be British wanting to add a bit of culture to our trek. For a brief moment we contemplated putting her in a French or German voice but since we actually wanted to know when to turn and where we were we decided against it. Could have certainly added to the adventure though! Who knows we could have ended up in Alaska instead of Arkansas, they're close enough, right? HaHa!

Meet "Madge", trusty leader of our grand adventure!

Saturday morning, we woke up rested and ready to go. After a few small last minute errands we were on the road by 11:00am.

Big Boy and Boopy, buckled in and ready to go!

Me, all set to act as co-pilot and in car flight attendant to the two backseat passengers.

Our beautiful pilot, sister Anne, better known as Guya!

For the most part, our drive started out pretty uneventful. That is until an hour later when we were driving over the Hoover Dam to head into Arizona. For those of you not familiar with the area, as I was, the best way out of Vegas was to drive over the Hoover Dam which is unfortunately a major tourist area. This wouldn't be so bad, except that pedestrians rule the road and mindlessly wander about. It would have to be at this point, in the middle of stop and go traffic, with no where to pull off the highway and no bathrooms insight, that Big Boy announces that he needs to go potty. And this is ultimately how we start our trip.... I have the fun of sharing that Big Boy thought Mama was a bit off her rocker, but cooperated nonetheless, when I had him unbuckle, stand up and pee in my empty McDonald's orange juice cup. I think Guya was about to die from the realization that there was pee sitting right next to her in the cup holder adjacent to her coffee. And before you gasp about Big Boy's safety, we were in stopped traffic and literally no where to get out and desolate empty desert looming ahead of us. It was either pee in a cup or have a nice puddle in the backseat.

Hoover Dam - location of Big Boy's first time to pee in a cup!

Figuring nothing could top the fun of peeing in a cup, I think we were set to sit back enjoy the barren desert, watch Disney DVD's and enjoy each other's company. We were wrong! We ventured into Arizona easy prey! It's a good thing, Guya can put the pedal to the metal before these guys could catch us!

Things did settle back down after the great dinosaur chase with not much to report other than a crappy dinner in New Mexico. The kids rode along wonderfully, reading, playing and watching movies. We opted to stay the night in Albuquerque, New Mexico since we were tired and there didn't seem to be much in the way of towns just ahead. In fact Sunday morning we were really glad we didn't push it to Tucumcari, New Mexico. When we stopped there for an early drive-thru lunch we realized that there wasn't much to the town at all and not meaning to sound snobbish, but everything off the highway seemed to be a bit of a dump.

Booby had fun reading a Thomas the Train book. Don't you think she rather talented that she can read upside down?

Boopy also enjoyed copying Mama with her play camera. I bet she got some really great imaginary photos!

Big Boy, the quieter of the two, was very content watching movies and playing with anything truck related.

Later in the evening on our 2nd day, we found ourselves in north eastern Oklahoma. Hungry, we started looking for somewhere to eat in between Oklahoma City and Tulsa. Normally, one wouldn't think this should be an issue, but since we found ourselves on a toll road, massive trees and now restaurant signs in sight, it became an issue. We did find an exit ahead that showed food symbols and took the risk to see what our choices were. After paying our exit toll, we found ourselves venturing 5 miles along a windy road into the small town of Chandler, OK and stopping at a Taco Mayo for mexican food. Thankfully this worked for everyone, since there was no other choice but the convenience store at the neighboring gas station. "Madge" did her job and got us back to the interstate after our meal.

A bit later after the DVD battery died and it was dark the kids were forced to entertain themselves. Boopy decided to try her abilities at a Houdini trick and proceeded to try to take her shirt off while buckled in her car seat. Why she insists (frequently) being half naked is beyond me, or perhaps it's just something I don't want think about much for fear that this pastime will transcend into adulthood. Regardless, she insisted "NO SHIRT" and ended up requiring a bit of help from the co-pilot, Me, to remove her shirt. It looked like so much fun that Big Boy decided to join her. The real fun came when Boopy tried to put her shirt back on (see picture below)!

Although we didn't quite make it to my Grandma's town the 2nd day, we did make it about 2 1/2 hours away, in Siloam Springs, just across the Arkansas border. Not too bad considering we started the day in New Mexico. We actually could have pushed it but Big Boy had one of the few meltdowns of the trip and woke up crying that he wanted to go to sleep in a bed. Really, who could blame the poor kid!

After a good night sleep we loaded back up and drove the rest of the way into Mountain Home, Arkansas for our visit to see Grandma Carol.

Pretty views on the drive in to Mountain Home, Arkansas.