10 Days, 1685 Miles and 25 Hours Later…

Posted on 01.01.08 in Family and there are

Well, Jimmy and I have just returned from a 10 day, 1685 mile road trip with our three kids (ages 5 years, 3 years and 9 months).

Here are some highlights:

• We visited Memphis, Huntsville, Alabama, Nashville and Texarkana (yes, Texarkana).
• We spent over 25 hours driving in our minivan.
• I love my minivan
• We stayed in one house with 23 people and shared 1 room with all 3 of our children for 4 nights.
• I had a stomach bug. (A minor one...but still. Yuck.)
• We ate snails. (Jimmy’s family is French, so escargot are a part of every holiday. Ugh.)
• We ate Borscht. (It was yummy).
• I went on a 6 mile run with my sister and brother in law.
• I adore my sister in law.
• We took a little family vacation in Nashville.
• We had dinner with Kristin and Brody and their three precious boys.
• Kristin and Brody ARE as cool as they seem on their blogs.
• We received a GPS navigation thingy for Christmas.
• We named it Mandi.
• Mandi rocks.
• We saw a reinactment of a Civil War battle.
• It terrified our 3 year old.
• We visited the Opryland Hotel. (Can anyone tell me why the speed limit at Opryland is 24 mph? Random.)

Your Turn
So, I’m back. I missed you all.

Apparently, the world keeps revolving when I don’t blog. Sometimes I forget that.

A. What were some of your holiday highlights?
B. Can anyone think of a less attractive city name than Texarkana?

The Comments:

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Don’t you just love Texarkana!!!  I’m always happy to be there b/c that means I’m back in TX!!!

Jamie

We used to drive through Texarkana every year on our family vacation, and sometimes stayed there. I remember a motel restaurant there that had one half in Texas and one half in Arkansas, and had all the appropriate memorabilia for each state all over the room for that side.

I’m kinda sad that you guys were like 2 miles from my house, but we didn’t get to visit. We would have been glad to drive anywhere to visit with you, and even treated the whole bunch of ya to a big meal at the place of your choice. (Did you happen to visit the Rainforest Cafe while at the Opryland?) Will you ever be up this way again? For goodness sake, let me know if you will be!

What were some of your holiday highlights?
We ate too much over the holidays and didn’t really do very much—we did hang out a lot with family and friends, which is actually great but doesn’t make for interesting blog-comment conversation.

Can anyone think of a less attractive city name than Texarkana?
Hell.

When I moved back to Texas, I got out at the rest stop in Texarkana and kissed the ground. 

A.  Seeing family and being in the wedding of one of my best friends.
B.  Bucksnort, Tennessee.  You should’ve passed it on your way to/from Nashvegas.

Highlighs: Tending a 10-month old with RSV, and a 104 fever, for a week.  While hosting the family Christmas at our house.  Then going to see Playhouse Disney live (Mickey, Handy Manny, Little Einsteins, and Tigger and Pooh).

Bad names: Looneyville, Texas (also one in West Virginia)

Crazy talk - making fun of Texarkana! I too fondly remember the family trips driving from Texas to family in Ohio and always stopping for breakfast at a Shoney’s (I believe?) in Texarkana. Funny how you remember odd things like that from childhood, isn’t it?

I’m quite sure someone could find a worse name, but really Texarkana isn’t that bad, is it? Nice little ring to it…

Follow-ups:
City Name: Here is a whopper of a town name (for the sake of this family blog, I merely link to where you can read the name).  Apparently, they take pride in the name and voted in 2004 to keep the name and not change it to something less apt to be ridiculed.

Snails: I like escargot, if cooked properly.  If poorly cooked it’s like eating rubber.

Speed Limit: Kat, did you read the sign carefully?  I suspect that the speed limit you read was 24 kmph (kilometers per hour), which is ~15 mph.  I’ve seen many touritsy places put up speed limit signs in both kmph and mph to assist the international visitors.

I love my sister in law!

Try Boring, Oregon.
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode;=&time;=&date;=&ttype;=&q=boring,+or&ie=UTF8&ll=45.469762,-122.372589&spn=0.175279,0.461426&z=11&iwloc=addr&om=1

It’s in a beautiful part of the country actually.

Euphrony,

I made the mistake of following your link before reading the following text and was quite surprised.  Your town name takes the cake.

MB

As luck would have it...we are planning on driving down to SXSW and our route...takes us right through Texarkana..

However we decided to leave our “minivan killer” (a traditional full size station wagon complete with V8, rear wheel drive and wood-grain sides) home and borrow the inlaws full-size van instead.

What did you do to keep the kids entertained on the road (answers involving ipods or DVD’s are not allowed...)

Boyink,
Hi! I’m honored you stopped by here. And congrats on your new role at EE. Are you still doing freelance stuff too?

Anyway, our kids actually only watch 3 hours of tv for the entire 25+ hour drive. And they didn’t ask for any of them and would have been fine without it.

I don’t know exactly how old your kids are, but a few things that worked really well for us:

1. Timing - I scheduled for “something” to happen every hour. Snack, surprise, audio book, etc. We didn’t always “do” something every hour, but knowing I had something new to present to them made the hours fly by.

2. Snacks - I packed a bunch of healthy(ish) snacks in little snack bags so that I could easily dole them out to all the kids. One thing that was fun was that since I was in the front seat, the girls (3 and 5) were in the far back so that I could sit in the back seat next to my 8 month, if needed. Consequently, I had to throw their snacks back to them - they LOVED it! It was so fun for me to try to throw well enough for a 3 and 5 year old to catch and they had a blast trying to catch it.

3. Gifts - we went to the dollar store and spent a couple bucks on fun little trinkets. Then I looked through their toybox for toys that they haven’t played with in awhile and I wrapped all of them indiviually in paper. Every couple hours, if they’d been good, they could open a gift. They had as much fun getting their old toys as they did the new ones. This was by far the most effective thing I did to make the trip go smoothly. The girls had so much fun looking forward to opening the presents.

4. How far is it? - My girls asked this question incessantly until I made a little map and put a clip on it to show our position. Then they stopped asking (as much) and just looked at the clip to see how far we had to go.

5. Audio books - these are a hit with our kids. I probably should have brought more of them.

Well, those are the ideas I remember right now. I hope it helps!

Hi Kat -

Thanks...yes, I will still be doing freelance work as the EL position is part-time.  I’m hoping this arrangement is kind of the “perfect setup” of a steady paycheck plus the fun/non-routine/be my own boss advantages of freelance work.  We’ll see…

My kids are a bit older - 9&11;- but most of your ideas will work.  My folks did the “daily gift” thing when we were kids—we did alot of traveling by motorhome.

I have one that can read on the road so that will keep her busy quite a bit.  She’ll even read out loud for her brother’s sake (he who can get sick just thinking about reading on the road..)

Having their own map is a good idea though.

We get 24 hours...ONE way..on the way down we’ll break that up with a stop at the St. Louis Arch...and coming home it’ll be a bit less as we’ll be coming from Austin.  Still alot of road time though!

Kat,
I’ve been informed that I should apologize and ask forgiveness for that last link.  I come with abject humility and hope it does not land me on your permanent naughty list.

Sincerely,
Euphrony the Abashed

Euphrony,
No apologies necessary!

I asked…

I was born in Texarkana.  (I am not offended. I am not offended. I am not offended.) On the Texas side.  But you could see Arkansas from the window of the hospital.  So it is okay.

Aww thanks Kat, you are too! We were glad to meet you!

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