The kids and I spent 10 days in TX with my parents. My dad recently took a new job at Texas A&M, so he works there about one week a month. The kids and I decided to tag along this time, while Ron was in India. (Yeah, I think I mentioned most of this earlier.)
Let me tell you, it was exhausting! The kids were clingy and missing home. They asked me several times when they’d get to see their dad again. Before we even got to my parents place Sophia was asking when we were going home. She said she missed her bed. Yeah, it was a long 10 days.
We did so some fun things, though. We went to Washington-on-the-Brazos State Park. It just so happened that we were there during the Republic of Texas Independence, so they had several events. We spent about 4-5 hours at the Living Farm. The kids had a lot of fun. Sophia learned how to dance, the kids played with toys from the time period, they got to wash clothes using a washboard. (Sophia seemed to love this. She did it twice!) They watched ox plow a field, made corn husk dolls, saw how/where the people (including slaves) lived, and even made rope! It was really pretty cool.
We also went on a tour of the Blue Bell Ice Cream Factory. We saw how the ice cream is made, packed, and shipped. It was pretty neat. Of course, we got to eat some, too. 
We made lots of trips to many different parks. It turns out the kids were much more interested in the surroundings than the actual playground equipment. At one point, Sophia exclaimed, “Mom, you gotta see this!! A whole patch of 3 leaf clovers!!” I didn’t have the heart to tell her 3 leaf clovers are every where. They also discovered steams with minnows and ponds with ducks that liked eating bread they threw for (or rather, at) them.
My parents and I took the kids kite flying. They absolutely loved it. Drew was able to get his kite to fly, but Sophia’s kite was a piece of junk that wouldn’t get fly for anything! So there was a bunch of fighting over Drew’s kite. Even my mom ran with the kite and was able to keep it flying. It was fun to see all of us with the kids, acting like kids. Sophia had another famous quote. She was mad that Drew wasn’t sharing his kite so she stomped up and down the field screaming, “I’m mad and Drew doesn’t care!” She said this over and over. It was really quite funny.
I think I’ll enjoy the memories of the trip much more than I enjoyed the actual trip. It was hard being the only parent, with my parents. The kids and I shared a room, with Drew and I sharing a bed, which meant kids went to bed late, I didn’t sleep well, and I couldn’t wait to get home, sleeping in our own beds. Ugh…
