Trip to Texas part 1

I am so behind on this blog, I know.  I am behind on just about everything lately.  I have been fighting one case after another of mastitis, and I just can't seem to get my feet under me to get back into the swing of things.  I was on an antibiotic for nearly 3 weeks, just to get mastitis back again only 3 days after I got off of it.  Blech!!  :P  I am now on another, super-duper dose of another antibiotic in hopes that this does the trick for good.  Anyway...... just so you know why I have been slacking!!  Now, on to our trip!

The day after Christmas we took down our tree, packed up clothes and things and got ready for our trip to Texas!!  Everything was ready the next morning, but we had to wait for our trash to be picked up and then we were off by 9am!  We were going all the way into Texarkana, so it was going to be a long day.  The kids were good on the trip though.  We ran into some construction traffic in Arkansas where we went a mile or two in one hour.  All in all, it took us just over 13 hours that first day.  It was supposed to take 12, and given that we stopped for both lunch and dinner, and sat in that traffic, I thought we made pretty good time!

The kids had lots of fun playing video games in the car.  In general, I am not much of a video game person.  Our kids are limited to only being able to play on Tuesdays and Saturdays and only for an hour on those days.  I would rather they play outside or in the playroom.  But that is just me.  I do like to have the games for the long trips though and they like that there are no restrictions when we travel.  :)

Evan wanted to watch a show.  I can't remember what he was watching.  He watched a lot of Christmas shows and Barney on the way.  It was getting to be later in the day at this point and he was tired.  Tired of being in the car seat and just tired in general.

After sitting in the car seat for so long, and given that we weren't really moving at all, I got Katelynn out and let her play on my lap.  She was glad for that.  I started off in the front, but most of my time was spent in the back tending to Katelynn.  Weston and I switched out seats back and forth as needed.  We made it to our hotel.  We got 2 rooms, but this hotel didn't have connecting rooms.  Our rooms were side by side, but there were no connecting rooms.  So, I had Amber, Katelynn and Evan, and Barth had Weston, Brian, and Aaron.  My room fell right to sleep.

It didn't take us long the next day to travel into Dallas.  Just after crossing Lake Ray Hubbard, Amber had to go to the bathroom.  We couldn't find any McDonald's to stop in so we stopped at a Bass Pro Shop.  :)  Afterwards we let the kids walk around and look at the cool fish tanks.

They were glad to stretch their legs a bit even though we had only been on the road for about 2 hours.

Evan and Amber loved the fish.  Katelynn was just happy to be out of that seat!  She wanted nothing to do with it the second day!!!

We rolled into G and G Yorke's house around noon.  They had a picture planned for the day with everyone.  It was the only time that everyone could get together for a big family picture.  Here are all the cousins outside.  19 in all!!  :)  Katelynn was done by this point, but all in all, the kids did great!

It was so fun to see everyone!!  The kids had a great time seeing Grandma and Grandpa and getting reacquainted with their cousins!!  It was a fun start to our trip!