Chicago Road Trip: Part 1

 

So, remember last year, when we got back from this trip, and I said Daniel was planning “one last grand finale road trip”, and it was going to be crazy?”  Well, we did it!  It might take a few posts to document it.

But first I will explain how all our road-tripping came to be.  Our first one was back in 2009.  We were driving to Florida to visit my sister and her family in Miami.  Instead of just driving straight there and back we decided it would be fun to turn it into a “Gulf Coast Road Trip”, and try to hit all the states we could along the way.  This is what our route looked like:

We had so much fun on that trip, that the next year we decided to do it again.  Only this time, we wanted to see all the states in the area above our Gulf Coast trip.  That was our Great Smoky Mountain Road Trip, and it looked like this:

We had figured that while we’re living in Texas, we want to be able to see as much as the eastern half of the country as possible.  On our drive home from last year’s trip, Daniel started getting wild ideas about one last big road trip, bigger than anything we’d attempted before.  When we got home, he started mapping it out on the map on our kitchen table.  We decided it would be fun to make it a baseball trip;  Daniel and I spent a few nights looking at all the major league baseball schedules, trying to coordinate the states we’d be in with baseball games in certain cities.  Once we’d settled on the perfect time to go (the end of June, which would allow for 5 MLB games along the way), we started planning for the rest of it.  We had so much fun planning this one!  We spent night after night, looking up different cities, researching things to do and places to eat.  Daniel created an awesome spreadsheet that we put everything into.  Anyway, here’s what we did:

I told you it was crazy!  It was an eleven day trip.  We spent one night in Derby, KS; one night in Kansas City, MO; one night in Fargo, ND; one night in Minneapolis, MN; three nights in Chicago, IL; one night in Detroit, MI; one night in Cincinnati, OH; and one night in Little Rock, AR.  Plus there were some other fun cities we stopped in along the way, but didn’t spend the night.  I think we drove in 17 different states.

Here we have Cynthia practicing her best “road trip” faces (the first day was rough while she figured out how to sleep in her carseat, but after that she was a great traveler).  Henry and Lizza are studying the maps and trying to figure out where the heck we’re going.

Day 1:  Derby, Kansas

Our first stop was my sister’s house in Derby, which is just outside of Wichita.  We got there pretty late and put the kids right to bed, but in the morning they were happy to see their cousins and get some playing time in before we left.

All the cousins together (minus my sister’s new baby, who was still sleeping):

More cousin fun:

Henry’s favorite part about Kansas:

My brother-in-law showed it to him and let him sit on it, and we could not keep him in the house after that – he kept sneaking out to try to ride it.

 

Day 2:  Kansas City, Missouri

Our next stop, and first official baseball city, was Kansas City, Missouri.  Some friends of ours from grad school who are living in Iowa drove down and met us there for the day. 

We started out by eating lunch at Oklahoma Joe’s (the first of many Man vs. Food stops on this trip).  The line was super long (by the time we left, the line just to get into the restaurant was outside and wrapped around the building), but the food was worth the wait.  Oklahoma Joe’s is famous for something called “burnt ends”, and Ollie had seen all about it on the Travel Channel, so that’s what he ordered, and it ended up being his favorite meal of the whole trip.

After lunch we drove into downtown Kansas City and then walked around and saw some of the different fountains.  I guess Kansas City is called the “City of Fountains” because they have so many.  I never knew that before.  To be honest, I don’t know if I even knew Kansas City existed before this trip, though.  It was not a city I had ever thought about before. 

They had one fountain area in the middle of the city where lots of kids play.  It was very slippery and dangerous and there was lots of running into each other and several wipeouts.  Still fun, though.

After the fountains, we dropped off the boys (minus Henry) at the baseball game, and the rest of us went to our hotel for swimming and dinner.

The guys at the game (Kansas City Royals vs. Cubs):

Day 3: Independence, Missouri; Omaha, Nebraska; and Fargo, North Dakota

Before we left Missouri, we stopped in both Independence and Liberty to go to the visitor centers there. 

Then we were on our way north.  It was a stressful day of driving.  The Missouri river was really flooded, and even covering the road in several areas, so we had to take a few long detours.  We’ve been having a record drought in Texas, so it was crazy to see this much water everywhere.

On a restaurant patio in Omaha, Nebraska:

We finally made it past all the flooding, and were on our way to Fargo to spend the night.  There was nothing really special that we wanted to see in Fargo – we just wanted to cross North Dakota off our list of states we’ve been in.  One thing I remember about Fargo is how light it was – we got there after 9:00 at night, and it was still light outside.  The kids were happy to finally get to our hotel.  Cynthia especially went crazy at all the hotels on this trip – she loved exploring. 

And the older kids enjoyed the continental breakfast the next morning, as usual.  This is always one of their favorite parts of a road trip.

Well, that’s it for part one – next up, Minneapolis.

Out in the Wild

I am working on a post about our road trip, but it is easier to just post something funny that Oliver said today.  They just finished their first week back at school, but he is still clearly in his summer "I want to spend all day catching animals" mode. 

We were driving to the swimming pool this afternoon, when the kids noticed their PE teacher riding her bike along a busy street by our house.  They were very excited (I think it seemed kind of fun to see a teacher in a non-school environment), and they all rolled down their windows and were shouting hello, etc.

After she rode off, Oliver commented, "Wow, that was weird.  I don't think I've ever seen Ms. Craft out in the wild before." 

I was laughing my head off (and so was he, after he thought about what he'd said)

June 2011

 

I have a list in my brain of things I want to be blogging about (our big family road trip, going to an Eddie Vedder concert with Oliver in Chicago, my sister trip in Utah, Rachel and Henry’s birthdays, and mine and Daniel’s trip to Baltimore and DC), but since June came first, I guess I’ll start with that.

Everyone was happy to be out of school.  We did lots of swimming and fort-building.  Lizza turned 5.

Other June things:

Cynthia discovered the dishwasher.  I have to be quick now, because she rushes over to “help” as soon as she sees it open. 

Oliver with some turtles he caught down at the pond.  Henry was so excited about it.  He kept making Oliver let them go in the front yard so he could catch them again.  Finally, an animal that moves slow enough for him to catch!  I know I’ve written about this before, but he is still so funny about animals.  Whenever he sees any animal, he yells out about how he would either like to catch it or ride on it.  It takes forever to get through books with him – the other day I was reading him a dinosaur book, and on every page he had to show me which spot he would sit on the dinosaur if he could ride it some day (I had pointed out that some of the dinosaurs might be too spiky, but he was good at always finding some tiny little spot that he thought he might fit). 

The kids sleeping in their summer fort. They slept in this for almost the whole month of June – I finally made them take it down right before we left on our big road trip.  Sometimes I asked them if they’d be more comfortable in their own beds instead of just on a blanket on the floor.  Tristan said, “yeah, it would be more comfortable, but sometimes it’s just more fun to do something different.” 

Rachel being a good popsicle sharer:

Cindy the Explorer:

I used to put her in the backpack sometimes when I was trying to make dinner.  She thought it was super fun to try to pull all my hair out, so I wrapped a dishtowel around my head and clipped it tight.  All the kids thought it was sooo funny, but I was proud of my invention because it stopped the hair-pulling.

 

The kids out on our tiny back porch in Lizza’s birthday pool:

Cynthia saying goodnight to her special lover, the hand towel holder.  She has such a crush – every night when we walk past it to go to bed, she squeals and lunges for it.  I usually give in and let her stand on the counter so she can hold on to it and kiss it and talk to it.  I don’t know what she sees in that thing.

My beautiful Henry boy with his face all messed up from jumping onto the treadmill while Oliver was using it.  It was a sad day.  He has declared that he doesn’t want to use the treadmill anymore. 

Cynthia at 8 months old:

Henry doing his summer job.  He has kept our barstools and benches very clean all summer.  It’s a good job for a two-year old.

Tristan and Oliver went through a big fishing stage in June. Their friend has a pole, and they’d all go down to the pond every day and fish for hours.  They’ve both asked for fishing poles for Christmas, but we better get some rain first, because lately it’s been so hot and dry that the pond has completely dried up. 

Cindy figured out how to climb up the stairs.  She was pretty pleased with herself.  She loves going up to join the big kids in the playroom.

Rachel working on her study time.  I’ve used this website for my older kids this summer, and I love it!  They each have their own account, and the website keeps track of how many problems they’ve done in each subject, tells them when they’ve gotten enough right to pass a subject off, and recommends new subjects to try.  It also has links to videos to teach them how to the do the problems if they’re attempting a subject they haven’t learned yet.  It’s really awesome. 

But for those who aren’t interested in educational websites, here’s Cindy playing dress-up: