Family Vacation. Chapter 1: The Joy is in the Journey

 When David and I were first married, we traveled every chance we could get.  And when Noel came along, we took him with us.  By the time he was 10 months old he had been to 10 states.  Smooth sailing, for the most part.

Enter child #2.  Now, I'm not saying it's Elise's fault we didn't travel so much anymore.  It's just that traveling with 2 little ones is a lot of work.  We had a horrendous trip to Atlanta when Elise was about 6 weeks old that still makes me shudder, so we were a little gunshy.

But little by little we have gotten back into traveling, and last week we went on a trip to Devil's Den State Park in northwest Arkansas.  It was about a 12 hour drive, so we decided to break it up into 2 days and enjoy the trip.

 As you can see, Elise was riveted.  Actually, she sleeps for only 20-30 minutes on most long trips.  I just happened to catch a sweet picture of her napping.

 Noel is ready to go.  All he needs is his teddy bear and some movies.

On our first day we drove to a little diner near St. Louis called the Blue Springs Diner.  It's a family style restaurant with all the fixin's. And it was delicious.  Too bad our children weren't really into eating.  So David and I took turns entertaining the childrent while the other one gobbled down as much food as we could.  Hey, good food is good food.

We made a pit stop in St. Louis to visit my dear friend Jennifer Reedy.  Jen and I were roommates when I went to Illinois State.  We had such a good time visiting with her, seeing her house, meeting her dogs and just laughing.  My kids, of course, were crazy because they had been cooped up all day in the car.  I'm just glad they didn't break anything.

We stopped for the night in Rolla, nearly missing a huge storm, so we were very thankful for that.  Noel and David enjoyed the pool at the hotel and Elise and I enjoyed some Food Network (I'll have to write another post about how my daughter will not get in pools.  "Too scary," she says). The kids slept well and we were on our way early the next morning after I introduced Noel and Elise to the hotel wafflemaker.  Mmmmmm

By the way, does anyone really eat the hard boiled eggs at a continental breakfast?  They look strange and very uninviting to me. 

We arrived at the park Monday afternoon, and the fun commenced, especially after Matt, Jenni, Jude, and Mattie Collins family arrived and we got groceries.  Two ingredients to a fun time:  food and the Collins family.

Oh, and there is a town in southern Missouri called Noel.  Love it.

More to come in the next chapter. . .