Visit from Cousins

The day we got home from our big road trip, we were met at our house by my sister, her husband, and their six kids.  They were on a road trip of their own, in the middle of a move from Florida to Washington.  We were glad they were able to stay with us for a few days on their way.

It also happened to be the 4th of July.  We couldn’t do any fireworks (because of the drought in Texas everything had been banned), so we just enjoyed a big dinner together and then headed to the pool.

Here are 10 of the 12 cousins eating dinner together (Laura’s two youngest weren’t at the table):

Henry and Pace (4) were best buddies at the pool:

And Rachel and Gretchen renewed their best friend status right away.  I love how cousin love can just start right up again, no matter how long it’s been since they’ve seen each other. 

They included Lizza in the fun, too:

Lizza playing hide-and-seek behind a pole.  I love this picture – she’s so skinny, it actually does kind of hide her. 

The next day the kids spent a lot of time playing games.

Henry and Pace made up their own game, kind of a checkers/chess combo.  I’m not sure how the rules worked on that one.  It looks like the board might not have even been involved, since Henry’s sitting on it.

They also had a lot of fun discussing Lego magazines together:

Last year Laura and I were both pregnant with our sixth kids together.  We had almost the same due date, but her little boy was born 2 weeks before Cynthia. I loved seeing them hang out together.

They remind me of the Siamese twins in Lady and the Tramp (except cuter, of course).  Who, us?  We’re not getting into trouble!  We didn’t just unplug this.  We are completely innocent!

We went back to the pool the second day – it was an easy way to keep all 12 kids entertained.

Here are some attempts to get a group shot of all the kids together.  Cindy kept ruining the shots by crawling away.  We gave up on getting everyone to look at the camera at the same time, and decided to just focus on keeping everyone in the picture:

Back at the house – lots of Lego building.

The next morning it was time to say goodbye, and they continued on their move. 

I can’t wait until we can come visit you in Seattle (it will be just as much fun, except with maybe less swimming).

Chicago Road Trip: Part 4

Day 8:  Detroit, Michigan

After our stay in Chicago we headed to Detroit, which is about 4 hours away.  It was a fun part of the trip for us because we got to meet up with Daniel’s brother Nicolas who was working there for the summer, and also Daniel’s brother-in-law Tyson (he was working in Toronto and made the drive down).  The kids were excited to see their uncles. 

We met them for lunch in downtown Detroit at the famous Coney Island hot dog restaurants that are right next to each other.   These two places have been featured on Food Wars and on Man vs. Food, so it was cool to see them in real life.  We chose to go to the American Coney Island store.  I guess we’ll have to go back someday to try the Lafayette hot dogs and compare. 

Tristan and Oliver were pretty happy with their coney dogs.  I got a Greek salad with pita bread and also rice pudding (they have lots of good Greek food there) because hot dogs with lots of toppings on them make me nervous.   That is Daniel’s head in the bottom left of the picture.  He is trying to clean up the root beer that spilled everywhere when our waiter brought us our food and knocked over a full cup onto Daniel’s lap.  It was a rough start, but we recovered and still had a good lunch.

After lunch we drove across a bridge to Belle Isle, a little island park in the Detroit River in between Detroit and Canada.  Everyone thought it was fun to be able to see Canada across the river.  The kids ran around and played catch with Daniel and Nick.

The kids and Nick by a fancy fountain:

After we played around for awhile, we started to drive back to Detroit.  The plan was for us to drop Daniel and the boys off at the baseball game (Nick and Tyson were also going to the game with them), and then I would take the younger kids back to the hotel and get checked in and settled down for the night. 

As we were driving around the island, though, we saw a little beach area with a waterslide.  I thought it might be fun to take the younger kids swimming there, since there was not a pool back at the hotel and we were just going to be sitting there all evening (I didn’t really want to take the kids out exploring by myself in downtown Detroit).  We already had all our swimming stuff in the car, since we hadn’t unpacked yet.  We made a quick change of plans, and it worked out perfectly – Nick and Tyson took Daniel and the boys to the game, and I stayed on the island with our car so we could go swimming and then drive straight to our hotel from there. 

Here are Lizza, Rachel, and Henry in the Detroit River.  You can see downtown Detroit in the distance.

They had lots of fun playing in the sand and swimming around.  Rachel was the only one old enough to go down the waterslide.  She loved it and went down over and over again (later she decided that was one of her favorite parts of the whole trip).  Lizza and Henry were pretty jealous, but tried to be good sports. 

Here is a funny story about the waterslide:  The way it worked was you paid $3, and then you could go down the slide as many times as you wanted.  When we got in line for Rachel to enter the slide place, the lady who was supposed to take our money was on break.  The lifeguard measured Rachel to make sure she was tall enough, then gave her a wristband and said she could start sliding anyway, and we could just pay on our way out.  This seemed like a good plan.  She went down the slide several times.  When it was time to go, I went to give the lady at the booth our $3.  I told her about how Rachel had already been on the slide, and we just needed to pay before we left.  She looked at Rachel and said, “I don’t think she’s tall enough to go on the slide.  They shouldn’t have let her go.”  I said, “Oh, well.  I’m sorry if she’s not tall enough – they said she could go on it, so she did.  Here’s the 3 dollars.  We’re leaving now, so she won’t slide anymore.”  She said, “no way, I am not taking your money – she’s not tall enough go on the slide.”  I started over with my explanation about how Rachel had already been on the slide, we were leaving, we weren’t trying to go on the slide anymore at all, and I just really wanted to pay.  She didn’t care.  She kept shaking her head and putting up her hand and rolling her eyes and being like, “what part of ‘no’ don’t you understand?”   We finally left, and Rachel just got all those rides for free.  If I had only known you didn’t have to pay if you’re too short to be allowed on the slide in the first place, I would have asked the lifeguard to please let Lizza and Henry go down, too.

Cindy was sleeping in the pack the whole time we were at the beach, so I don’t have any pictures of her there.  To make up for it, here is a picture of her taking a bath in the sink back at our hotel in Detroit:

And here are the other kids, all bathed and in pajamas and ready for bed.  I let them watch the Swan Princess on the laptop while I got Cynthia to sleep.  They thought that was pretty great.

Meanwhile, Daniel, Tristan, and Oliver were having a good time at the baseball game with Nick and Tyson. 

After the game they went to eat a super late dinner at Laikon Café, a really good Greek restaurant we had heard about.  I never knew Detroit was known for good Greek food.  That is the kind of fun thing you can learn on road trips. 

 

Day 9:  Cincinnati, Ohio and Newport, Kentucky

The next morning we packed up and drove about 6 hours to Cincinnati.  When we got there we stopped first in Fountain Square.

We all got ice-cream cones at Graeter’s.  I had never heard of this place before our trip, but these are two things I learned:  there was an article about it in the New York Times that said it "is considered by most connoisseurs to be the finest ice cream in the world."  Also, Oprah Winfrey says "You haven't had ice cream till you've had Graeter's.”  They might be right.  It was pretty good.

After our ice-cream we dropped the boys off at the stadium for their last baseball game of the trip.  Then we drove across the Ohio River to Newport, Kentucky, which is where our hotel was.  The only problem was that once we got there they didn’t have a room ready for us, and they said it might be a few hours. 

I decided it might be fun to try to walk out on one of the pedestrian bridges that connects Newport to downtown Cincinnati.  There was one that we could see from our hotel, and it seemed like it wasn’t too far away.  Ha!  It was much further away than it seemed.  We walked and walked and walked.  It was really hot, and the sun was beating down right on our faces the whole time.  I tried to convince the kids that we were having fun.  They weren’t sure if we were.  Finally we got to the bridge.  It’s official name is the Newport Southbank Bridge, but people call it the Purple People Bridge, because it is painted a lovely shade of purple (and it’s for people, not cars).  We walked about halfway out on it, where we had a great view of downtown Cincinnati.  We could even see the stadium where the boys were.  Rachel, Lizza, and Henry had fun throwing tiny pebbles off the bridge and watching for boats.  And posing for pictures.  Cynthia decided she’d had enough, and fell asleep. 

After the long walk back to our hotel, we finally were able to check into our room.  We had a window looking out on the Ohio River and the kids sat and watched all the boats and barges going by. 

Here are the boys at the baseball game.  They tried to enjoy it, but it was really hot, muggy, and sunny.  The Cincinnati Reds were playing the Cleveland Indians.  Ollie was rooting for the Indians, because that was his Little League team.  They won, and he was happy about that. 

After the game they walked over one of the bridges into Newport, and I went and picked them up.  We went to Chipotle for dinner.  We had thought about trying out some of the local Cincinnati restaurants, but we really just felt like having burritos. 

Here are Rachel and Lizza sleeping at our hotel in Newport.  It makes me laugh when kids bicker about not having enough space on a bed when they’re trying to fall asleep, and then somehow they always end up like this:

 

Day 10:  Nashville, Tennessee and Little Rock, Arkansas

The next day we had a long day of driving to get to Little Rock.  We stopped in Nashville on the way to see the Opryland Resort Hotel.  This place is so huge!  It has several atriums and indoor waterfalls and a little river with boats and fish.  We walked around for awhile just exploring.  There was a big Irish dance competition going on, and also some beauty pageants, so there were lots of dancers running everywhere and little girls with makeup and giant wigs.  It was funny. 

After we explored, we ate lunch at a Mexican restaurant inside the hotel.  It was good, but ridiculously expensive.  Daniel and I looked at each other when we got the bill, and both said, “Okay, we’re done eating out with the whole family for a long time.”

When we got to our hotel in Little Rock the kids wanted to go swimming one last time (especially the boys, because they hadn’t been able to go much because of the baseball games).  It was late, so I put Henry and Cynthia to bed, and then I headed down to the pool with the older four.  I’m glad I did – we had a really good time.  I’m not usually at the pool without the little ones, so it was fun to be able to get in with the kids and really play with them.  I taught them how to play Marco Polo, and we played that until everyone was tired. 

 

Day 11:  Home to Texas

We left Little Rock and headed for home.  It felt weird to be done with our trip – we had planned for it for so long, I think Daniel and I couldn’t believe we had actually done it, and now it was over.  We’d been in 17 different states and driven almost 4,000 miles.  We learned a lot - about our country and different cities and baseball, and also about our family (mostly that hauling six kids around the country can be a little stressful at times and we might not be as patient as we thought we were).  I’m glad we did it.  I hope when our kids are older they’ll look back and remember all the fun trips we did as a family. 

THE END!!!!!!

 

(see part 1 here, part 2 here, Eddie Vedder concert here, and part 3 here)

Chicago Road Trip: Part 3

 

Day 6:  Chicago, Illinois

Chicago was our main destination for this road trip.  We spent three nights and two days there – it was nice to have a break from all the driving, and also to be able to spend a lot of time in the city with our family.  Daniel used to live in Chicago when he was a little kid, and he’s been back for business trips since, but I had never been before, so I was pretty excited about it.  

Our first day in Chicago we went to the Museum of Science and Industry.  It is a great museum.  There is so much to see and do, you could spend all day there (and we almost did – some friends of ours who had recommended it to us had told us how big and fun it is, so we had set aside several hours so we wouldn’t feel rushed). 

There were lots of human body exhibits, with actual bones and organs, etc.  It was both fascinating (if you are Oliver) and gross (if you are Rachel). 

There was another cool exhibit that had the technology to track different kinds of brainwaves.  Here Tristan and Oliver are trying to see who can think the calmest thoughts, which causes a little ball in a tube to roll to the other side (the object is to try to be so calm that it forces the ball all the way across the table).  I have no idea how it works.

After Ollie beat Tristan easily (which was not surprising – Oliver is pretty good at tuning everything out, and Tristan may be incapable of not thinking a million thoughts at once), I decided to try it against Oliver.  At first he was beating me and the ball was almost to my side, but then it stopped, switched directions, and went steadily back to Oliver’s side until I’d won.  Daniel had been watching, and he told the kids, “I thought Ollie was going to win until I saw mom put on her labor face, and then I knew it was over.”   It made me laugh because he was exactly right – I had totally just pretended that I was having a baby, with calm breathing and everything.  Haha.  I guess after watching me have six kids, Daniel knows that face pretty well. 

Here we are having more fun at the museum, and also Cynthia taking a nap in her stroller:

And here we are having ice-cream for lunch, because that’s the kind of thing you do when you’re on vacation. 

After lunch there were still lots more things to see, including trains, tractors, giant replicas of the sun, baby chicks actually hatching from their eggs, fake cows, astronaut suits, and a miniature model of Chicago:

There was a whole section just about circuses, and the kids loved the wacky mirrors.  I couldn’t stop laughing at Cynthia’s super long legs sticking out of the pack. 

When we had seen all we wanted to see and walked about as far as we could handle, we left the museum and drove over to the nearby Promontory Point Park on Lake Michigan.  I don’t know why, but I was pretty excited about seeing Lake Michigan.  I had been looking forward to it the whole trip.  I love that Chicago is right next to such a big lake.  I love water.  Whenever I see some, I feel like I might be tempted to jump right in and go swimming.  Luckily Daniel knows this about me, so he says things like “don’t even think about it” the minute we get out of the car.  I wonder if I have a recognizable  “ooh, I want to go swimming” face, kind of like my labor face. 

Here is Daniel with all the kids, looking out at Lake Michigan.  This is one of my favorite pictures of the trip.  I love Cindy’s little purple bum right next to Daniel.  Sometimes it is neat to have six kids just for the cool pictures you can get. 

However, I realized the secret to a good family picture is to have everyone facing away from the camera!  Daniel tried to take one of me with the kids, only this time everyone was turned around, and it didn’t turn out quite so cute:  Lizza is protesting about something, Henry’s covering his face, and Cindy wouldn’t stop climbing up my stomach to try to leap over my shoulder into the lake (I guess she takes after me). 

Me and Cindy with Chicago in the background:

Even though we didn’t bring our swimsuits, we decided to at least let everyone go touch the water (because it’s not every day you get to touch Lake Michigan). 

Next we went to dinner at an Italian beef place.  That place was kind of a disaster.  There were no tables or chairs inside (it is tradition for people to just eat their sandwiches standing up), so we were at a dirty little table outside with flies everywhere, and all the kids were starving, only the Italian beef was too spicy, or it had too many peppers on it, or they were sad because we were making them share a hot dog because they didn’t like the sandwiches, etc.  Anyway, it was a stressful meal and somehow we were all still hungry when we left (looking back, it was probably the kind of place Daniel and I would love going to on one of our couple trips, but it just wasn’t the best place to take all the kids at the end of a long day when all they’d had to eat was ice-cream for lunch). 

After dinner Oliver and I went to an Eddie Vedder concert at the Chicago Theater.  It was one of the best experiences of the whole trip.  You can read more about it here.

 

Day 7:  Chicago, Illinois

The next morning we drove back to downtown (our hotel was a little bit outside the city) and went to Millenium Park. 

Here we are at the face fountain:

The kids loved splashing around in the water.

And here we are in front of the “Bean”:

Walking through downtown Chicago, and taking the subway to Wrigley Field:

In all the other cities we had decided to just have Daniel take the older boys to the baseball games in the evening while I hung out at the hotel with the younger kids, who would rather go swimming anyway.  In Chicago we got tickets for the whole family, though, because we thought it would be neat for everyone to be able to go to a game at Wrigley Field. 

Our seats were up high, but in the shade, which was all that mattered to me.  The game started around 1:00, and it was a hot and sunny day; I was so happy I didn’t have to sunscreen everybody.  It was fun being there all together, although all the kids except Tristan and Oliver lost interest in actually watching the game after the first five minutes.   

On the subway, heading back toward downtown.  I think the subway ride was Henry’s favorite part of the baseball game.  He was chatting with everyone and making lots of new friends. 

Then we did a lot of walking to get to Gino’s East, where we tried the famous deep-dish pizza for dinner.  It was good, but I think we all liked the regular thin crust better.  As Tristan is illustrating so well, the deep dish was a little cheesy. 

After dinner we did a lot more walking to get to the John Hancock Center, a 100-story skyscraper that is over 1000 feet tall.  We got tickets for the observatory at the top.

There were amazing views of Chicago in all directions.

While we were up there it started to rain.

Here the kids are watching the storm roll in.  It was so interesting to see it from so high up.  And here’s something funny about this picture – I didn’t even notice that Lizza was crying until I uploaded it onto the computer.  I’m guessing she was either hurt or teased by one of her siblings, or she is panicking about the storm.  They are equally likely. 

We stayed up in the observatory for a long time during the storm.  There was one area that was an open-air skywalk – it was really windy and rainy in there, and neat to think that we were in the middle of a rain cloud. 

We kept waiting to see if the storm was going to pass by – we still had a really long walk back to our car, and we didn’t want to attempt it with all the kids in the rain.  We went down the elevator to the bottom of the Hancock Center, and then decided to have Daniel run back to get the car with Tristan and Oliver while I waited there with the younger four kids.  I had pictured us finding a nice cozy bench or something inside that we could wait happily on until he came back with the car.  It didn’t really happen like that;  it was freezing inside, and there was nowhere to sit.  I decided to take the kids outside to see if there was a better place to wait.  It was still pouring rain.  We crossed the street to try to go inside an American Girl store (Rachel and Lizza were so excited about that plan), but it was closing right when we got there.  Meanwhile, the storm had gotten worse.  It was raining buckets and thundering louder than I’ve ever heard, with lightning flashing everywhere.  I was really glad we weren’t still up in the tower.  There were people everywhere, trying to huddle up under any sort of cover, but all the stores were closing, so we couldn’t go inside.  We ended up just staying outside the American Girl store under a little overhang.  Henry and Cynthia were crying, and Rachel and Lizza were scared, but at least we were dry. 

Here they are sitting on the dirty sidewalk, trying to be good sports. 

We waited and waited, and worried about Daniel and the boys trying to make it to the car.  Then after they finally reached the car, they had to wait in the parking garage for awhile because it had started hailing gigantic chunks of hail that were not really safe to be driving in.

It was a very adventurous and slightly tense final night in Chicago, but eventually we all were reunited and were able to drive back to our hotel and put some very tired kids to bed.

Next morning, on to Detroit!