The Trip Continues

Thank you to everyone for the "portable potty" suggestions.  Since Dave is in his car seat with a bar right at the crotch (and since he's David, whose motto is "chaos at all costs"), I think we might have to wait on that until he's out of the car seat.  Generally when we make stops, I make everyone go in and try to do something so presumably we don't have to stop so often for so many bladders.  I'm sure that one day this will be funny...well, actually, it's funny now but I'm sure that it will be the stuff of family lore at some point.  The capricious nature of David's bladder...

So anyway, after spending the evening at Friend Sharon's parents' house in Arkansas, we started on the second leg of the trip to the reunion:  Arkansas to Brady, TX.  For this, we drove through western Arkansas, eastern and southeastern OK, north and north central Texas.  The potty situation seemed under control (plus I've found that small towns are much more likely to have restrooms accessible to the general public and we saw a lot of small towns in AR and OK), the drive was uneventful until we stopped for food and gas (and not in that order) in McAlester, OK.  At some point, Rachel thought she dropped an earring and, tender-hearted mama that I am, I drove her back to where she though she'd dropped it in the parking lot.  When she opened her door to look, she found the earring, in the car.  I guess I got mama points for listening and responding.  We continued on.

We listened to a lot of Hank the Cowdog books on tape during this part of the trip.  Hank makes us cackle.  I'm sure that anyone who saw us in the car while we were listening to Hank, would have thought we were escapees from an asylum (if they still existed) because we're laughing so hard at parts of those books.  Anyway, they served to pass the time.  The girls accused me of not telling them when we were crossing into other states, which I didn't because we were otherwise occupied.  So the afternoon progressed and I had vague hopes of clearing the Dallas-Ft. Worth Metroplex area before rush hour got good and going.  Murphy traveled with us, so naturally we didn't.  But we did get a worthwhile surprise.  We got to see an air show from the highway.

The reason the traffic was so bad going into Ft. Worth was that there was an air show going on.  Not only were people attempting to get to the air show, but other people stopped on the medians and by the side of the road to watch, so traffic was a mess.  There were times that we just sat on the highway and watched the show along with everyone else.  Our first inkling that something unusual was going on was when we saw two jets seemingly diving straight into the ground, while we were driving down the highway.  I don't remember whether Sarah or I saw them first but soon I was watching them with my heart in my throat.  (I have a recurring nightmare where a plane crashes right in front of my eyes.  Don't know why.)  Anyway, they, of course, pulled up at the last minute and then ended up flying over the top of us, sitting on the road.  I looked up and saw the red Thunderbird design on the bottom of the planes and said, "Hey, girls!  I think it's the Thunderbirds!"  Of course, since I'm a dunce generally, I called my sil, a former AF officer and public relations liason and asked her what the underside of the Thunderbirds' planes looked like.  If they weren't the Thunderbirds, they were a pretty good imitation.

As traffic slowly moved through the area, we were treated to several low passes and general maneuvers overhead.  The girls enjoyed it but David flat loved the screech and boom as the planes flew overhead.  We pulled out of the area reluctantly and David said, "More, Mommy, more!"  He was a scream.  We did get through the Metroplex without issue and continued on to the little town of Brady, arriving there after dark.

Well, that's all I have time to write about now.  The adventures continue as time permits...have a great day!