Here we come WV!

Good morning from I-20, just east of I-35. Needless to say, we got a late start, but we are finally on the road. We are listening to some Alabama driving down the highway and we are happy little travelers! In case you were totally unaware, traveling is my most favorite thing to do with my little family. The girls are such good road trippers. Most people think we are nuts for driving everywhere, but you can't see this beautiful country very well from an airplane. Something seems a little off though...Sydney Ellen isn't here with us. She's being a good girl and going to school today. I know she is capable hands, so I'm sure it won't feel too odd for too long. Just seems strange that I can't look back and see her sweet little face sitting in the far back quoting what ever movie they are watching, line by line. :-)

Mom will pick her up when she gets off of work and then they'll set out for the same destination as us...Wild, Wonderful, West Virginia! Sydney was very excited this morning that her Mamaw was picking her up from school. I think some of the people at Dickinson were happy too. Mom misses our little campus and I think they miss her as well. .

We plan on making it to Elizabethtown, KY this evening. It'll be late, but then we'll only be about 6 or 8 hours from Granny's house if we make it there and it'll help tomorrow to not be such a beating. :-)  It's been over a year since me, Eric and the girls have seen this part of the family and I just hate that. Too bad West Virginia isn't closer to Texas.

I was looking at roadsideamerica.com to see if anything interesting had popped up since last summer. Nothing has...at least not from here to Texarkana. The worst part about traveling this time of the year for us is that it gets dark horribly early which leads to being horribly bored. That's one reason that we are totally bypassing Tennessee. The drive from Memphis to Nashville is brutal enough in the day time. Add pitch-black darkness to that and it's a real snooze-fest.

Well, that's pretty much it for now. I'll try to blog often, but you never know. I may forget...I usually do. :-)

Oops!

I just realized that I have not finished blogging about our Branson vacation and here it is almost time to go to the beach!
As usual, we had a more than fantastic time in Branson. This is not just a place for older people in a tour bus. It is a wonderful family vacation spot and almost every day since we've been back I've heard from one or more of the girls that they want to go back. (AND GO BACK NOW!!! as Sydney puts it) They only place they seem to enjoy more is Disney World. (understandably)

I snapped the above pic on the fly. I didn't realize where I was til we were right up on it. I spent 6 weeks (over 6 summers) here as a young'n. We went to church camp near here and I loved every minute of it. Most that went to Falls Creek would say the same thing.

Above is the Big Blue Whale of Catoosa, Oklahoma. Attractions like this is one of the many reasons we enjoyed our travel on Route 66. This used to be a swim park, but I wouldn't dare get in the water now. This was a fun stop though.

Here are the girls at Bass Pro in Branson. They love going here to look at the fish. We have a pic like this from every trip. I need to put them side by side to see the difference from year to year.

The girls at a scenic overlook that we always check out. As you can tell, it was quite windy that day.

Eric and the girls, feeding the fish

I love this pic of the girls. Look at their crazy hair!

Eric and Sydney at Mel's Hard Luck Diner. One of our favorite places to visit while we're there.

Sydney with a Santa in the Christmas store

And, here she is driving a bumper boat by herself for the first time. She belly laughed the whole time. It. Was. Awesome.

Graci Lou and me and Eric. There are sooo many more pics. But, I guess since most that are following are also friends on facebook, maybe I should just wrap this trip up. All of the pics are on FB.

If I have time before we leave Saturday, I'll post some more pics of this trip. We love this place and can't wait to go back. Happy Trails!

Pics of 66 (part 1...or is it 2)

I blogged very little about our Rt 66 trip, mainly because blogger was being a stinker and not letting me upload pics on Eric's computer. Blogs about interesting things are much LESS interesting if there are no pics to go with it. So...lets get to it. Here are a few pics of our Rt 66 trip. We didn't cover a ton of it, but we were able to eat at a restaurant featured on DDD, saw a huge, blue whale and I got to put my feet on original Route 66 brick roads. For us, that made for a good day.

Here is the shell of an old gas station. I love these kinds of finds.

I don't know if you'll be able to read the above. The station has quite a little history to it. Counterfeiting, murder. Read it if you can.

And...here I am...in the doorway. The window that you see there in the back, is a window that used to lead to the secret room where the counterfeiting was done.

Here are my piggies, standing on original brick paving in Davenport, OK.

Above is the Round Barn. It was built in 1898 and has been nicely restored. We didn't stop to go in, but from the outside, it is a beautiful building. This building is in Arcadia. The old gas station above is also just outside of Arcadia.

As I'm posting these pics, I am noticing that I'm all over the map. These pics are not in order, but I'll do my best to tell you where everything was.

Ok peeps. I'm getting sleepy, so I'll finish up the 66 part of our trip at a later date. I will say though that looking at these pics again is making me excited for a future trip west. Next spring break, if all goes according to plan, we expect to be torturing the children with a drive out west. We'd like to go to Tombstone, Phoenix, The Grand Canyon, Flagstaff and finish the trip off with a few days traveling 66 back east to Amarillo!! Can't wait!!

Time does fly when you're having fun...and dealing with whiney kids

Wow...as of tomorrow, our time here in Branson is over. I've lacked in blog posts, pretty much because every time I try to upload a pic, blogger teases me by letting my upload one and then disappoints me by not letting me load more. How am I supposed to torture everyone with pics of the Hansen Family Vacation if blogger won't let me load pics? (yes, I know roughly 500 could see them on facebook)Maybe I should have a 'slide watching party'. I'll find someone that still processes slides and drag out a slide projector and show the pics on a white sheet hanging up in my living room. (it would be much easier to just hook the computer up to the tv, but where's the fun in that, right?)

Despite the whiny kids (and they really weren't all THAT whiny) we've had a great time here. We always do. This place is beautiful! And, as busy as the strip is...I LOVE IT! I'm sure if I lived here, after a while I'd avoid it like the plague, but I'm content on our trips here to sit in traffic and just enjoy the mayhem.

We've shopped, eaten (in mostly), swam, relaxed. We've done less this trip than our previous trips. It's kinda nice though. We didn't feel like we had to have something on the books every day we were here. If we wanted go somewhere, we did. If we didn't, well, we didn't! Judging from my 'check ins' on Facebook, the only place we really felt like we had to be was Andy's Frozen Custard. We were there four times. Gee-oh-wiz! We're going to have to get back to eating good when we get home. It's difficult to do on vacation. We tried...but not too hard.

Tomorrow morning we'll get ready, pack up and head out. I'll be happy to get home to my own bed and to my puppy, but I'll be sad to leave. It's so pretty here and we've now had 3 (4 if you count the two days i was here last summer with mom and the girls) great family vacations here. Every time one of the girls would whine about something, I'd try to remind them that not every family is as blessed as we are to get to go to such great places. Not every mom and dad can take (or want to take) vacations with their kids like we can and to try and be thankful for the things that we did get to do and not upset about the things that we didn't. They were actually pretty receptive to that. (once or twice)

If Eric doesn't make me drive tomorrow, I'll have roughly 8 hours to try and figure out how to post more than one pic to the blog from this computer. :-) I'll let you know how that works out for me.

Nitey nite!

I know you're shocked....

But I'm terribly behind on blogging this trip. It seems like that always happens. I tend to have lofty aspirations of turning in early every night, sitting under lamplight with the laptop and regaling you with the events of the day. But alas, here it is Thursday and I'm just on Monday. Heck...I haven't even been able to finish with Sunday yet.

Lets see...Monday.
We got up and had breakfast and then headed to Branson Landing. We always look forward to this for a few reasons. 1) Bass Pro Shop is there and the girls LOVE going to bass pro and looking at the fish and all of the stuffed creatures. Audrey really, reallllly enjoys it...

(hey look...a pic uploaded to my blog. maybe i can finish sunday this evening)

That's a once-alive-but-now-its-stuffed-squirrel people!! Ewwww!!!! She would have left the store with it if she could have. Look how proud she is of herself. She was nuzzling her face up against it and loving on it. I was completely oooged out!

Here they are looking at the fish at Bass Pro. I don't care how many times we walk through this store, they always want to stop and look at the fist. This isn't even a big display, but they sure do love it.

SIDE NOTE:
For some reason blogger, again, will not let me upload a second picture, so feel free to imagine my sweet girls looking at the fish at bass pro. And, while you're at it, feel free to imagine the girls two years ago, as I was also going to post that pic so that we could all ooo and ahhh over how much they've grown.

AND....while you're at THAT....please picture my sweet girls swimming Monday afternoon. I had several sweet pictures of them doing that as well, but I'm not even going to try and upload those cause I'm sure that those wouldn't upload either and I'd just be all kinds of mad.

Have a lovely day and I'll try to post another 'one picture post' later!

Our visit to the Alfred P Murrah Federal Building Site (Oklahoma City National Memorial)

Taken from Wikipedia:

The Oklahoma City bombing was a bomb attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. It was the most destructive act of terrorism on American soil until the September 11, 2001 attacks. The Oklahoma blast claimed 168 lives, including 19 children under the age of 6, and injured more than 680 people. The blast destroyed or damaged 324 buildings within a sixteen-block radius, destroyed or burned 86 cars, and shattered glass in 258 nearby buildings. The bomb was estimated to have caused at least $652 million worth of damage. Extensive rescue efforts were undertaken by local, state, federal, and worldwide agencies in the wake of the bombing, and substantial donations were received from across the country.


Within 90 minutes of the explosion, Timothy McVeigh was stopped by Oklahoma State Trooper Charlie Hanger for driving without a license plate and arrested for unlawfully carrying a weapon. Forensic evidence quickly linked McVeigh and Terry Nichols to the attack; Nichols was arrested, and within days both were charged. Michael and Lori Fortier were later identified as accomplices. McVeigh, an American militia movement sympathizer, had detonated an explosive-filled truck parked in front of the building. McVeigh's co-conspirator, Terry Nichols, had assisted in the bomb preparation. Motivated by his hatred of the federal government and angered by what he perceived as its mishandling of the Waco Siege (1993) and the Ruby Ridge incident (1992), McVeigh timed his attack to coincide with the second anniversary of the deadly fire that ended the siege at Waco.


On April 19, 2000, the Oklahoma City National Memorial was dedicated on the site of the Murrah Federal Building, commemorating the victims of the bombing. Annual remembrance services are held at the same time of day as the original explosion occurred.


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You can't help but be quiet when you're standing in a place like this. Even my girls were quiet. For a whole hour, they did just what we told them they needed to do while we were there.

There are two 'gates', one on each end of the memorial. They are big, square, metal arches. On one end, the time 9:01 is shown. On the other, 9:03. The minute before the bombing when everything was normal and the minute after the bombing, when the city would be forever changed.

The above is the the arch with the time 9:03

We walked through this arch coming in to the memorial.

Below is the arch marked 9:01. It's kinda hard to see, but it's the best one we had.

(this is a view from by the survivor tree. this place is so pretty. it's hard to imagine what went on here)

Above is the survivor tree. This tree survived in a parking lot with burning cars all around.

Below is the Survivor's Wall. It is the only remaining portion of the Murrah Building that is still standing. The names of each survivor of the bombing is on this wall. It's both calming and sad standing here. Thinking about what happened on the very ground that you're standing on is almost overwhelming.

The Chairs are, of course, the saddest part of this memorial. They are arranged in nine rows (front to back), representing the nine floors of the building.

If you look close, you'll notice that some of the chairs in the second row are smaller than the rest. These are for the children in the daycare that were killed in the bombing. Timothy McVeigh ruled out a 40 story Government Building in Little Rock, Arkansas, because of a florist shop on the ground floor, saying that he wanted to minimize non-government casualties. Yet, he didn't let the fact that children would be killed here bother him at all. 19 of the 168 people killed that day were children. It amazes me the little regard that people have for human life.

We didn't go through the museum inside. We didn't know how the girls would do and we wanted to get on the road. I do look forward to visiting again and going through the museum. The memorial is a beautiful tribute to the lives lost that day. If you're ever in OKC, and you haven't been, you should stop.

We got our kicks...

On Route 66.

Eric and I had a great day today tooling down the old US Highway. The girls had a good time coming up with different variations of "Are we there yet?" If they asked us once, they asked us a thousand times if we were almost there. I kept playing a fictional conversation over and over in my mind. This is how it went...
girls: are we there yet?
Me: no
Girls: are we there yet?
Me: nope
Girls: how bout now?
Me: yes!
Girls: really?
Me: no! (and then Eric and I laugh uncontrollably while rolling up a partition window between us and them so we can't hear their disappointed little voices ask us the same question for the umpteenth time)

Yes, I know we drive a mini-van and not a limo and yes I know I'm a horrible person for thinking such things, but I had to do something to cope.

I haven't loaded pics on the computer yet and I'm completely pooped, so I'm going to wait to blog about our stops til tomorrow. We did have a good time today though and I'm pretty sure the girls DID enjoy themselves, even if it was just a little.

Nitey nite from Branson!

And we're off!

I wish I could explain to everyone the feeling that comes over me when I'm getting ready for a good road trip. It's an anxious feeling, almost like the feeling you get when you're about to go on a first date. Every feeling I have will, no doubt, goes back to traveling during my childhood. It's all I knew until I started school. The last big memory I had of being with my dad in the truck was the trip I took with him and my cousin (who was driving with him at the time)to California. That was 22 years ago this very day...and it was Father's Day. I remember that it was father' day because I thought it was so cool that he wanted to spend Father's Day at....Disneyland. :-) He rented a blue, Ford Tempo and took me (and my cousin) to one of the happiest places on earth. Best. Dad. Ever.

Here I am, now 22 years to the day, driving up I-35, traveling with my children...and their daddy. We are going to Oklahoma City to stay the night and then in the morning we are going to go to The Oklahoma City Nantional Memorial and then we are going to take Rt 66 as far as we can before heading to Branson. Tomorrow is Father's Day, and while we aren't going to be at Disneyland, their daddy is taking them to their second favorite place to vacation, and I'm sure they'll think the same thing I did (and still do)22 years ago....Best. Dad. Ever.

Happy Father's Day (tomorrow) to my dad, my husband and all the other dads out there!