Impromptu trip to Austin...

We have had a crazy week! Monday morning we went with our friends, the Tolberts, to the Discovery Museum down at the Dallas Fair Park. They were having a celebration so we all got free passes to go and play! The kids had so much fun!! Mommy went nuts (too many kids, too much going on and very hard to keep track of my little ones!) but the kids LOVED it. They made crowns, made dino tracks, listened to stories, played with bubbles, played with balls, learned about our bodies, pretended to be firefighters, played in the water and the sand, checked out crazy mirrors, and learned lots of cool stuff! There was so much to do and Eileen could easily have been happy there for many more hours, but the others needed naps and food, so we stopped for lunch and then went home to recover!

With Dan being gone so much recently we had all been missing him lots and lots. So this week when the opportunity presented itself to go with him on this trip to Austin, we jumped at it. (At least we jumped at it, once we convinced Eileen that it was ok to miss a day of preschool...) So Tuesday night we decided we were going and packed up and left Wednesday morning. Dan was driving the bus, so the kids and I followed in our car. Part way down we stopped for lunch at an outlet mall, (Aaron loved shopping for clothes there...) then we arrived in Austin that afternoon. We spent an enjoyable evening playing in the hotel room and then went to IHOP for smiley face pancakes for dinner. The next day we went swimming for a bit in the morning (until the kids lips started turning blue!) then nap time (much too short of a nap time for mommy!) and in the afternoon we found a playground near by while taking a walk. That evening the whole group (school kids and all) went to Joe's Crab Shack for dinner and Dan let the girls ride on the bus. They LOVED it! They were so excited, and Eileen kept saying how she sat next to one of the kids. (She didn't, she sat next to one of the other teachers) Dan ordered a crab bucket and Eileen HATED the crab! It scared her! As soon as dinner arrived and we could eat I took the kids back for bed since they were rather tired and cranky! The next morning, we went to a nearby mall to get the kids wiggles out before strapping them into a car for hours. Eileen asked as we headed back to the hotel for lunch if she could watch TV during lunch again (we had brought bread and peanut butter and had been feeding the kids that for lunches) she wanted to watch Dora again. She wanted to watch the same episode that she had seen the day before. I had to explain to her how TV works, that it has different shows all the time. I love that she needed that explained to her, because it means she doesn't watch TV much! (I guess it's hard when we don't get any channels...) Anyway, we had fun, got exhausted and Anna peed in all her clothes, but we got to see daddy and do something different, and that made it all worth it.