Thanksgiving in Missouri - Part 2

After Thanksgiving was over, we took a couple of days to see the sights.  We decided we would like to see the zoo since it was such beautiful weather.  Brynn was amazing as to agree to come with us, even though she still wasn't feeling well.  It was so nice of her to come and tough it out to give us a little more time to spend with her.   The girls got to ride in the special wheelchair van, boys in the regular boring van.  Here we are, ready to get loaded up:

 The zoo was really fun.  Cora always likes the seals and sea lions.

Everyone liked the red panda (I can't quite see it in this picture, but it was mostly a picture of the kids anyway:

Some other favorites included the hyenas, grizzly bears, penguins, polar bears, and one of my personal favorite, the okapi.  The boys liked the "Somali Wild Ass," or at least they liked to talk about it a lot. I wonder why.

The sun was shining brightly, and there were still some colorful leaves on the trees in Missouri.

 I love swimming hippos!  So huge and so graceful.  And pretty dang cute.

We stopped in the middle of the day for lunch.  It took FOREVER because they only seemed to have one restaurant in the whole zoo, and it was packed.  Brynn, poor thing, didn't want any food and waited outside the crowded restaurant in the sunshine with her mom.  

After I got the kids their food, I went out to bring Lori her lunch.  I found them outside, Lori standing behind Brynn's wheelchair, just bent over and holding on to Brynn and resting her head on Brynn's little shoulder.  It was so sweet and so hard to see at the same time, and just ripped my heart open.  I didn't want to disturb them, but I thought Lori probably needed some food so after a minute I interrupted them and handed over the pretzel.  Cancer sucks so, sooo hard.  

Brynn was pretty tired by the afternoon, but we got a stranger to take a picture of all of us together at the zoo:   

After the picture, Lori and Brynn left, but the rest of us stayed at the zoo a while longer.  Even Kohl hung around with us, which was so sweet of him.  He reminds me a lot of Dan.  He doesn't say much, but he is so funny and has such a good heart.

Also on our St. Louis to-see list was the Gateway Arch.  Brynn didn't come with us on this adventure, and Lori stayed home to watch over her (and probably enjoyed the break from all of our noisiness!)

We picked up our tickets, and I made the boys all pose for a picture.  The sun was so bright off of the arch!  Forgive me for picture overload here, I thought the arch was really cool and took way too many pictures of it.

 Tried to get a selfie.  That is Dax's hand flashing the peace sign, not mine.

 The sun was going down as we got closer to the arch:

 It really is impressive up close.  That thing is TALL!

We walked over to the mighty Mississippi, and....threw a bunch of rocks into it.  Because that is what you do if you are a kid and there is a body of water nearby.  It was pretty impressive, especially compared to the teeny tiny "rivers" we have in Utah.  Dan tells me it was pretty low, and showed us how high it is in the spring during its flood stage.  It would be cool to see.

Being the annoying person that I am, I made everyone stand still for another picture.  They are nice and mostly complied.  Not sure what Chase is doing on his phone, but it looks fun:

Then we headed over to wait our turn to go up the little elevator to the top of the arch.  It was quite a wait.  We had time to spend in the gift shop, and time to just stand around.

We finally made it into the elevator!  You can fit 5 people in them.  The little boys plus Kohl went in one (Thanks, Kohl!) and the rest of us in another.  You can't tell from the picture, but all of our knees are touching.  It was very...cozy. 

 The views from the top were worth it though!  The windows were very small, but they still worked.

 Here are the three musketeers, sharing a window.

We spent quite a bit of time at the top, and then braved another elevator ride back down to earth.  Here is a picture from right below the arch.  Scary that we were all the way up there!

 Sorry, one last picture as we were leaving.  Even pretty at night!

Dax was having sooo much fun hanging out with his cousins.  He gets stuck with a bunch of girls more than he would like, so he was in heaven this whole trip.

The night was so warm that after we got home and ate pizza, the kids decided to play a game of tag outside.  I was in the hot tub when Arden came running up to me, nose streaming blood.  Her and Dax had collided in the dark.  After I got it to stop bleeding, we noticed that her nose was crooked.  "MY NOSE IS RUINED!" Arden shrieked.  I assured her it would be okay, but off to the Instacare she went.  Her nose was indeed broken, though it actually looked a lot better after it had swelled up.  It doesn't look as bad, but if you look you can see it is headed a little to the right.

She was a trooper about it.  On our last day, we played all morning at the house, and then headed out for some St. Louis barbecue.  St. Louis BBQ has a sweeter sauce (according to Dan), and this place even had a weird BBQ sauce that was pink.  Apparently it is kind of like fry sauce, but with BBQ sauce instead of ketchup.  Kohl likes it apparently,  Next time I'll give it a try.   Arden wasn't excited about getting another picture with her crooked nose.  Poor little stinker.

After lunch, we packed up and got ready to leave.  Brynn had been resting in bed, but she was sweet to get up (no small feat) and wish us goodbye.  It was hard to say goodbye to her, but at that point I was still hopeful that the chemotherapy regimen she was on would work, so I told myself that this might not be the last time we would see her. (The very next week the scans showed the chemo was not effective, and the decision was made to stop treatment.  She passed away January 5th.  I am thankful now that at the time of our visit we had a sliver of hope left.)

Our drive home was fairly uneventful.  Lots of driving and tablets and more driving.  We went a different way, through Kansas and Colorado this time, stopping once to sleep somewhere near the border of those two states.  Lots of cornfields either way you go, but I like cornfields.

It was a good trip, and long overdue. 

Thanksgiving in Missouri - Part 1

Since my brother Dan and his family weren't able to come and visit over the summer due to Brynn's cancer recurrence, we decided to finally make the journey to them.  According to my phone, it would take 19 hours and 1 minute to get from our house to theirs, which explains why we hadn't done the trip before.  But now that the kids were older I hoped they could handle it without too much whining.

We set out the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, since the kids got early out that day.  We drove and drove, and saw some windmills:

 Then we drove some more.  I spent most of my time sitting between whatever kids were in the back seat to provide a buffer.  It wasn't the most comfortable spot in the car, but it kept things pretty low-key.  Then we drove and drove.

The kids all had tablets, and we made sure they were loaded up with games and shows and everything.  Dax had loaded a lot of episodes of Pokemon, and he was pretty zoned in a lot of the time.  Which was okay, because a lot of Wyoming isn't too eventful.  We drove and drove.

 And drove.  We made it all the way across the border to Nebraska the first night.  We stayed in some little hotel in a town I can't remember the name of currently.  But it had a room that fit us all and also a free breakfast, so it met all of our needs.  First thing after breakfast, we were back in the car!

We had lots of snacks, and we brought some Wixi Stix to play with in the car too.  Arden made a beautiful headpiece and some bracelets and rings.  She was okay to model them for me:

We played the license plate game, drove and drove, listened to music, drove and drove, and saw a lot of cornfields while we drove and drove.  The kids were sooo excited when we finally saw this sign:

We are in Missouri!  Hooray!  Unfortunately, St. Louis is on the other end of the state.  Still like 4 or 5 more hours to go.  Those were the roughest, but we finally made it on Wednesday night!

When we arrived, Brynn was comfortably settled on the couch watching TV with her parents.  Drake was so happy to see us (mostly Daxton probably), and the other boys were at young mens.  We talked for a while until the other boys got home, and then we talked some more and watched a little TV.  We were pretty tired (which seems weird, since we hardly moved all day), but before long we were ready for bed.  Kohl had given up the basement to us, which was so nice of him!

The next morning Dax and Drake took over the downstairs.  They were multitasking by watching Bob Ross paint some happy little clouds while also playing on their tablets.

Lori was awesome and cooked us an amazing Thanksgiving dinner.  Preston and I offered to help, but she kept shooing us away.  So, we sat down and put our feet up and watched her and Dan work.

Thanksgiving Dinner (which we pretty much ate as a late lunch) was awesome!  Everything was delicious, and Lori makes my favorite kind of sweet potatoes, with pecans on top.  Kohl's friend Mitch (which is somehow related to me) came over and ate too.  And then, of course, came pie!  Brynn pretty much slept through the morning and through the meal, but Lori tells me she wasn't really eating food at their point since she always felt slightly nauseous from the chemo.  Poor little Brynn!

After dinner the adults sacked out on the couch, but my kids plus Chase and Drake were having a great time running all over the place.  They played several epic games of hide and seek, jumped on the trampoline a lot, and then played tag all around the house.  Finally they took a break and decided to get in the hot tub:

Brynn woke up and came out during all the noise.  We played a weird game about werewolves, which I didn't really understand, but it was kind of fun anyway.

After a few rounds of that game we gave up and some people played Clue for a while.  Brynn settled into the recliner and we watched Pitch Perfect 2, which Preston thoroughly enjoyed.  We had some more leftovers and some more pie.  Cuz, thanksgiving.  My, my, my, I love pie.  I think that is from a movie.

We mostly just hang out and talked and played the rest of the night.  After the kids were settled down, me and Dan and Lori took our turn in the hot tub for a while.  It was a good Thanksgiving.

Halloween 2017

Halloween!  The kids (unfortunately) had to go to school on Halloween, and (unfortunately) they are not allowed to wear their costumes!  Boring!  As soon as they got home, they got all costumed up.  Arden is Jin Erso from Star Wars:  Rogue One.  Cora is Rey from Star Wars:  The Force Awakens.  Dax is...Indiana Jones.  He got his costume a few weeks before Halloween, and by the actual day his Indiana Jones hat was pretty dang floppy.  but he was happy, so oh well.

First stop:  Grandma Wilson's house!  Grandma always has some good candy ready for us!

 I had the kids go pose under her tree, so many pretty yellow leaves!  Arden has her fancy pose all ready (notice the squirt gun standing in for a blaster).

 I chased down Dax and made him participate in the picture-taking, which is not his favorite thing.  I think he is throwing leaves here while the girls obediently pose.

We headed home, shoved some dinner in our faces, and then headed out. 

Arden had made arrangements to trick-or-treat with some friends, NO parents allowed.  They had a great time.  Cora also trick-or-treated with a friend, so of course Dax wanted a friend too, so we had to arrange that.  Trick-or-treating is getting complicated.  We were all together for our first house at least:

 We like to use our pillow cases.  We are old school like that. Plus, I didn't have anything else.

Here is Cora and her friend K at Dax's friend E's house.  They always have popcorn and hot chocolate set up, and the neighborhood likes to gather here and take a break and socialize.

After that we got down to business and concentrated on gathering candy.  It was pretty cold, but everyone went for a pretty long time, and the kids got TONS of candy.  Arden and Cora still haven't been able to eat all of theirs and it is January. 

One last picture, our jack-o-lanters!  We have a Mickey Vampire (Cora's), a weird skull kitty thing (Arden's), a screaming face (Preston), a "Trick or Treat" (me) and a Pokemon (Dax). 

It was a fun Halloween!