Road Trip

Sometime in the last year I forgot how crazy a car trip alone with four kids can be, and I decided to go visit my parents over Spring break.  The trip started out great with our first pit stop at Cabelas--what a great place to stop with kids (if you don't have to explain to them how all those animals ended up in the store).  

 Our next pitstop came literally 4 mins after Jaxon cried himself to sleep...for 2 seconds I thought about letting him sleep, but there was no way I was going to drive by a Cafe Rio without stopping.

After lunch we walked around the local mall and played at the play area.  As we were walking through the mall the kids spotted the Ester Bunny and ran up to him excited.  Jaxon on the other hand was scared out of his mind.  He kept backing up and trying to hide.

After another 5 hours of awesomeness, that included Jaxon crying a lot and him refusing to fall asleep without me reaching behind my seat and to hold his foot, we arrived at Sarah's house in Charlotte.  We spent a fun filled weekend at Sarah's house.  Sat morning we went to the neighborhood Easter Egg Hunt and Sun morning we went to church (where I was able to catch up with old friends).  In between the kids played hard!  The cousins were so so happy to be together.

Jaxon and Will

Talia, Katie and Addy

Marcus and Will

Monday morning we met some friends at Chick-fli-a for breakfast.  After, we headed to our old neighborhood to meet up with our gang there.

Finally, we headed to my parents house.  We met up with everyone at the skating rink where we were celebrating my mom's birthday.

Marcus saw this stunt by Bryan and Caleb--and begged to be part of it.

Addy showing off her split

The whole gang

The first day we were up on the mountain it snowed.  But, dispite it being a little colder then we planned we had a wonderful few days hanging out with Grandma and Grandpa and of course all the aunts and uncles.

The herd of goats that ran in front of our car on the way down the mountain.

The highlight of Katie's trip was a puppy that Bryan had dropped at my parents house for a few weeks.  She spent the whole time making sure it was warm and had enough to eat, and sneaking it back inside when Grandma put it out.

One afternoon we met Flossie and her kids at the local playground.  Of course, the puppy had to come with us.

We decided to leave Thurs afternoon, so we went for a hike in the morning to get the kids nice and tired.

We hiked a little off the trail to have a picnic by the river.  We told the kids not to get wet--of course, none of them listened. 

Sister-Alisa, Scotia, Me, Emmie and Flossie

The trip home was broken up by a stop at a hotel and an early morning swim, a little Cafe Rio, and an angel man at Jiffy Lube who filled my oil tank up for free because I couldn't find a gas station that used synthetic and we were on our way home to Mark.

Awesomeness

It was really cold this year, for a really long time.  And I complained about it.  I was dying for it to get warm so we could go outside, but the weather kept tricking us.  It would warm up for a day here and there but the cold always returned.

One of warmer days in March I pulled the kids out of school and we headed into NYC with some friends to visit the Intrepid.  The kids loved the ship.  It was really fun learning the history, checking out the sailors quarters and seeing how everything worked.

checking out the sailor's beds

Checking out the fighter planes that would that used the Intrepid as their landing strip.

Flying the helicopter

After exploring inside, the kids got to check out the submarine outside.  And then we got yelled at because the kids were climbing the ropes anchoring the ship, oh NYC.

First possible day, we headed to the playground after school.  Playgrounds are awesome now that Jax can walk and enjoy the slides, etc by himself.  Now whenever we go anywhere near the playground, he screams "yeah! yeah!" while pointing to the park.

In between our short burst outside, we hung out inside and had all sorts of cuteness going on.

Jaxon loves to read, I mean REALLY loves to read.  He is always asking someone to read to him.  He has gone through a money stage, a dinosaur stage, a monster stage, he is currently obsessed with books about trains and ducks.

Can you tell we are all still obsessed with Jax and that he is still obsessed with 'Daddy'.

And then there were my awesome little kiddos who all got principle awards again this grading period.

The kids with Katie's besties--Jasmine and Lexy.

Marcus and his besties--Dylan and Pranav