Trippin'

There are so many angles I could use to approach the documentation of our most wonderful trip! We made so many beautiful memories and I don't want to forget a single one.

First, we were truly blessed to get to leave a full 12 hours earlier than we had at first anticipated. It may not seem like much, but it means the difference between arriving at lunch time and having the whole rest of the day to spend with my parents, or arriving at bedtime to a "Hi. How are you? You look great and I love you a lot but I've GOT to get to sleep soon." The former is so much sweeter. Especially this trip, since we didn't travel the full distance at one time, but met my parents in Dallas instead for the first activity in a multi-day birthday celebration. My son is not having a traditional party this year, for a whole host of reasons, so he pretty much had free reign of planning our entire weekend instead, which is quite a compromise. And we found out he's good at it.

Anyway, our first stop was at the Gaylord Texan hotel and conference center to view a unique and rare exhibit called "Ice!" There are only 3 such exhibits in the U.S. and we have all wanted to go for the past two years. Wow! Not (just) the Ice! exhibit, but the Gaylord! I know everything is bigger in Texas but still! This place was INCREDIBLE!!! Beautiful! Humongous! And perfectly suited to my personal tastes. I LOVED the upscale southwestern decor. (I spent my entire growing up years in Texas, and in Dallas specifically, so I'm gaudy like that.) The Ice! exhibit also was just........incredible. The artistic endeavor that went into sculpting 15,000 square feet of ice blocks into beautiful room-sized masterpieces of trains, and toy shops and nativities all lit from within with thousands of twinkling lights. I LOVED the looks on the kids faces as we entered each new room! And I'll forever treasure the looks on the faces of my parents and husband as well as I photographed each one descending a thirty foot ice slide in an 8 degree fort amidst the most robust laughter! I so appreciate my parents for their constant PARTICIPATION in their grandchildren's memories, rather than resting tired muscles from the sidelines. I know it's sometimes quite a sacrifice.

After the cold Ice! fun, we made our way over to the Rain Forest Cafe for a grand birthday dinner. But not before a major detour. Leaving for Texas earlier in the day, my parents had called to tell us they were waiting for us at the restaurant. We in turn told them we had gotten on the road about an hour and a half later than intended and had to go ahead and eat so we should change plans from lunch to dinner and head to Ice! first. They looked up the location on their GPS and we also did on ours. They headed over to the map's location - 45 miles away - and called us back an hour later, ASSURING us in no uncertain terms that that was most certainly the wrong location! We all figured out the mistake via cell phone communication and they headed to the correct place, which was within 2 miles of their original post at the Rain Forest Cafe! Good thing they found our guffaw as least as funny as it was inconvenient!

After putting our name in with the Cafe hostess, we had time to roam the mall for a few minutes of our wait. My daughter and I ducked into a shop glazed with sequins and satin on a hundred different fairy tale dresses until my older son came in to get us, giggling. We had been too utterly engrossed in pretty frou-frou to notice the hilarity taking place outside. The boys had spotted something they had never seen before. I had never seen something like this before. Nor had my hubby or my parents in all of their years of life. It was a red laced 5 ft. by 7 ft. bra, hanging merrily amongst the Christmas decor of the opposing store front! I almost lost it when one of the boys blurted, "Wow! absolutely EVERYTHING is bigger in Texas!" Then my husband added, "I didn't know the Jolly Green Giant had a wife!" Oh, have the kids had fun with that!

At dinner my mom tried to subtly ask our waitress for the staff to sing to Dalton for his birthday. She excitedly agreed and kept it well secret, until she brought the extra plates and forks to the table and inexplicably pointed at him with a swirling finger motion and a really obvious sly grin. We couldn't help but giggle that she was so unaware what a dead give away her actions were. But, she was friendly and fun and brought out a "Volcano brownie" big enough to feed us all with leftovers, so hey, let bygones be bygones.

The kids, of course, wanted to ride the remaining two hours of our trip to Grandma and "Graypa's" house with them, so we shifted a few gifts from one car to the other and made the late night drive. Greg and I used the time alone to serve as a fun date. Once again I couldn't help but celebrate the nostalgia of being back where I came of age - in the good ole' Lone Star state. It's funny, I've lived here now longer than I did in Texas, but that is where an overwhelming majority of my childhood memories were formed, and it still somehow fits to be there, even after all these years. My parents lived in Oklahoma only 5 of the years I've been old enough to remember, from when I was a high school junior to a recent college graduate, so I often joke that they moved here just to dump me off and move back. But Texas seems to accept us each time we visit. We always feel right at home.

Well, I'll have to split up this post. It's going to be much longer than I realized. And the weekend had only just begun.......