Nothing Short of Amazing: March 2014

Saturday, March 29, 2014

Spring break trip 2014 to Arkansas to visit Matt's cousins---the McCarthy's

Here are some highlights of our trip. Feel free to skip ahead to pictures.

Our drive down was a bit long...10 hours. 3 hours into our trip Greta had already partially eaten 3 varieties of granola bars and thrown them on the floor in front of her carseat, watched 2 kiddy videos, sang several songs of "crinkle, crinkle little star" and spit a chewed beef stick into Noelle's jacket. Only 7 hours to go!!

Once we hit St Louis Noelle was really fascinated by East St Louis. Almost more than the arch. Something really cute Noelle asked...
Are there a lot of blind people in St. Louis?? I see a sign for the school for the blind.

Thank goodness for books and DVD's. James started finished a whole book on the way down from the Ashfall series.

One we arrived to their place we were in ah of their neighborhood. They live in a beautiful brick two story home beautifully decorated. An added bonus to their place is the club house. We spent many hours their using the tennis courts, basketball courts, indoor track and driving range.

Each day we did fun day trips. Day one we went to the Walmart museum. Rogers, Arkansas is the town of the first Walmart. We did a outing to Cabella's. Another day we went Hobbs State Park and hiked some trails. One evening we did some rock wall climbing. This had a new challenge since no gear was provided...it was all free climbing.

The fun was intermixed with some drama. 12 hours after arriving Aiden The four year old cousin got his finger shut in a door. This ended with an ER visit for sutures. Another interested side event...Dave mixed in some business while we were there. As we were all packing our cars to head out for an overnighter in St Louis Dave decided to sell his vechile. It took him all of an hour while all of us were packing. Business man!!!! Heather isn't far behind...she keeps busy with her Wildtree Business and their oldest son Ethan with his fish sitting and side business of bring all trash cans up to the neighbors homes after trash is collected for a quarter a bin.

All the kids kept busy in and outside the house in between our events with ping pong, doll houses, stickers, body art, movies, bubbles, sword fighting...

Unfortunately our time ended abruptly with the MacCarthy's. Their intent was to drive up to St Louis for an overnighter with us. When stopping at a gas station for gas their car wouldn't start. Heather and Dave decided not to chance it and headed back to Rogers. Maybe to car shop???

Another highlight was Heather's & Dave's cooking!! Big breakfasts of French toast, waffles, egg sausage breakfast sandwiches. Dinners weren't far behind....homemade pizzas, enchilada casserole, marinaded pork on the grill. And of course desserts of root beer floats and ice cream from the ice cream shop. Good thing we were active each day!!

As we were approaching the city of St. Louis Greta was in awe of all the buildings. She thought the buildings were her toys. Once she spotted the arch she kept commenting on it being upside down. ???

After checking into our hotel we dashed for the arch hoping to make the last trip to the top. We just missed it. Instead we took pictures at the base, toured the museum inside and checked out the Mississippi River. Greta threw a tantrum when we had to walk away from the horse drawn carriages. She wanted to pet the horses.
Next we had dinner at Fridays and then hit the hotel swimming pool. Afterwards we got frozen yogurts loaded with yummy toppings.

Our hotel room was on the 17 floor...I almost got everyone to do the stairs with me...Noelle was the only trooper who did the whole trip up not once but twice!!

This morning we had an amazing full breakfast and did one last trip to the pool. Now we are on our last leg of the trip. Garmin says we should hit Stoughton around 4pm. Good thing we have several more Cosby shows to see. 😃