On the Road Again

Every time we think that a road trip is a good idea, we take one. We should have known!

We wanted to get an early start and meet my mom and her sleigh at the outlet mall in Hillsboro. I called to tell her that we were leaving and she was madly rushing around to get things ready. We arrived a little after 9 and since she was delayed a little I of course began to shop! Since there are have been bigger and better outlet malls built close by, this little one is slowly going under. I hit a couple of store closing sales and got a few good deals along the way. The car was already packed to the gills so when I got back to the car I found all my purchases sitting in my seat. I guess my husband was trying to nicely tell me that if I kept shopping I would have to hold it all! He did manage to find someplace to store them.

After noon my mom showed up. By then we were hungry and picnicked on the tables in front of the stores. There was a lady who was selling tamales to customers that were meeting her up at the outlet mall and we mentioned that looked good and she offered to sell us a dozen extra she had. They were excellent! We demolished those, added some german potato salad from our german Christmas, fed the children some sandwiches and then hit the road.

250 miles later we were on the border of Texas and Oklahoma and we needed a rest stop! We exited at the sign but didn't realize that we needed to backtrack on the other side of the freeway to get to the rest stop. We had entered Oklahoma, but went back to Texas once we turned around towards the rest stop. Realizing that we were doing this, we opted to turn around again and get back on the freeway and stop in OK. We left Texas, entered OK, and then entered TX again as we got back to the other side of the freeway. Once we finally found a place to turn around, we got back on the freeway and left Texas and finally entered OK for good. Yeah, okay, that makes no sense when you write it down.

We continued driving, grabbed a hotdog at a convenience store in Tulsa for dinner and then hit the road again where after 11 last night we finally arrived at the hotel. We had called ahead to find a place that was reasonably priced and served breakfast as feeding this hungry bunch can cost a bundle. My mom refuses to stay in any one star hotel, but I think we should up the standards to nothing less than three stars! We pulled up in front of the Lamplighter Inn in Springfield, and it looked okay. We got in there and the front desk clerks were pleasant but quirky. Em had to use the bathroom and one of the clerks ran around the corner and started yelling at the drunk man coming out of the women's restroom. we got Em situated after checking the bathroom and then went to our rooms. We had adjoining rooms...on the third floor....

Going up in the smelly elevator I was getting kind of nervous, but it was almost midnight and we were tired! I opened the room and expected to see mirrors over the ceiling. My mom's heater/ac was broken, so at midnight we are taking a tired Em, a wildly awake Abs and an energetic Junior down the hall to the new set of rooms. These were actually better than the first set, although I am glad we are staying just one night! The girls wanted to stay at the nice hotel that our windows looked out to, but we tucked them into bed and eventually we all fell asleep. Junior didn't get the message on sleeping through the night, but what's more fun than having a baby kick you and sleep on top of you all night as they try to get comfortable?

We are about to go to breakfast and then hit the road.