No, not Russia - Moscow, Idaho. Not many folks know just how vast our state is. Some estimates put us at 5th largest state in the union but for population density we're around 48th. What that translates to is lots of land and few people. Fine by us. We love it! What it also means is that we spent a lot of time in the car driving up north. Two small children on a long road trip...Adventure???
So how did we survive?
Well, we tried to time most of our driving around T Rex Princess' nap schedule. She actually ended up sleeping most of the time. And when she was not sleeping, she was serenading us with her supersoprano vocalizations to Sarah McLaughlin. We will spare you the video but it was charming. At least it was not crying. We packed a lot of snacks, books, and stickers. And for the really long stretches of driving T Rex was allowed a movie.
T Rex thought we were taking a tour of jungle gyms. We tried to make every stop some place he could get down, run, and play. And since most of the trip is rural countryside, there are not too many options so we hopped from park to park.
T Rex and T Rex Dad at the jungle gym stop in Moscow.
With T Rex Princess also at the Moscow jungle gym.
What did we do on this vacation? The purpose of the trip was to celebrate T Rex Dad's aunt and uncle's 90th birthdays and their 65th wedding anniversary. And we did this. It was a wonderful time. Although, we were the youngest group there by about 40-60 years. We got a lot of comments about how "energetic" our son was or "gosh, you must be busy". They all had kids, but it's just been a while since they've been around such young children. Hence, we did spend most of the time chasing kids and very little conversing, but it was still wonderful.
We did visit the University of Idaho, T Rex Dad's Alma Mater as well as G&G's.
T Rex LOVED running down "Hello Walk"
Isn't the architecture amazing? We don't have a lot of this kind of architecture out West because we are still relatively new.
T Rex at Grandpa's former Greek house back in the late 1940's.
T Rex Princess at Grandma N's sorority house back in the late 1940's/early 1950's.
We stopped in Troy, Idaho, to see T Rex's grandma's former residence. She passed away a month before T Rex was born. We also stopped at her grave site and the old farm after which we were graciously given a tour of the home by the current owner. That was very special for T Rex.
Photo of the farm - perfect cloudy day.
We took our first family of four swimming outting at the hotel pool. T Rex Princess is a little topedo - she just kicks and kicks, goes and goes. And T Rex loved splashing around with his daddy.
Ready for the pool.
It was a fast trip but well worth the efforts - even carting our laundry basket full of cloth diapers and doing laundry at the hotel. Exhausting but the family time both for the four of us as well as with the entire extended family was wonderful - really, that's what life is all about, right?
7 comments:
sounds like a great trip... great pics too. Can't believe how well they did with that 8 hour drive!
I love that you saw the grandparents sorority and fraternity houses...that is so neat!! And *high-five* on the diaper laundry :) I hauled mine home from the cottage and washing it up now!
That looks like a great trip. It's nice that you did the jungle gym tour. I'm just imagining your little torpedo in the pool :)
I love the "jungle gym" tour!! : )
Brave of you to travel with two small children. Sounds like they did great.
And I love love love that farm shot! Gorgeous!
1st of all the pic of the farm is GORGEOUS! 2nd...DANG you are brave to go on a road trip!
I think my boys would go NUTS! But eventually we're going to have to try!
RIGHT!!! Love that it's the 5th largest and 48th in population. GOod place to live. Looks like you all had a grand time. Love the baby in her swimsuit...so cute~!
What fun!! Our drive to South Carolina was long one and little kids do get frustrated over time in the car. We made stops similar to that just to get the kids out and moving for a bit. Most of the time we got food but never made the kids sit and eat. They ate after they were done playing and back on the road. We also let the boys watch way to many video's but it really does help.
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