Keeping Up With...Family (Texas Trip Recap Part 1)

This past summer when I realized that my 40th birthday fell on Easter Sunday and was also during the boys' spring break, I decided we needed to go away.  We planned to go to Florida to visit my brother, sister-in-law, nieces & parents.  Then my SIL got transferred to Dallas and we decided to change our destination.  We were all so excited to go somewhere we've never been before!  We planned for months and finally got everything together and hit the road early Thursday before Easter heading Southwest to Dallas!!

We were on the road a lot earlier than we thought and got out ahead of the forecasted rain.  We made great time on Thursday even though we had multiple bathroom stops.  We only had one (kid) potty accident early Thursday and the rest of the trip was smooth sailing.  Our goal was Memphis and we hit that about 6pm so we decided to press on.  We made it all the way to Little Rock on our first day leaving only about 5 hours of driving for Friday.

We did have a funny stop on the road that first day.  AJ told us he needed to use the bathroom.  We found a truck stop using our in car navigation system and headed to it.  When we got there we saw this...

And lots of construction.  Apparently they had knocked down the truck stop and are in the process of building something else.  Thankfully AJ was able to go in this without incidence.  The funniest part was we had just told the boys we would be stopping for dinner soon.  Daniel had headphones on and looked up when we stopped and yells "We're eating dinner here?!?!?!"  It was pretty funny!!

Friday morning we were up and on the road early.  If I'm being honest, we didn't get much sleep that night because our hotel wasn't that great.  We took our chances on a Quality Inn south of Little Rock to save $75.  It wasn't worth it.  We should have stayed closer to downtown or the airport.  But we survived and it did help us get up and out in the morning.

We were heading to Arlington on Friday and got there around lunch time.  We stopped at our (first ever) Jack in the Box for lunch before checking into our amazing suite for the night.  Thanks to my Dad & his Hilton points for that!!  Adrian & I weren't really impressed with Jack in the Box, it was just OK.  The boys loved the clowns all over the place.

After we checked in and got settled for the night we headed to our first stop, Six Flags over Texas.  I think that is how we made such good time.  We kept telling the boys that the quicker we drove the more rides we could ride.  We were all ready to hit our first amusement park for the season!  We had a rocky start because we chose to get in line for "Battle of Metropolis" which is a new ride there.  It broke down several times while we waited and were in line for almost 2 hours.  At least the ride was awesome & the boys LOVED it!

Finally ready to ride!

We spent about seven hours in the park Friday night riding as many rides as we could.  My brother Jon and niece Luci met us there for most of the night.  We had a great time riding everything.  The boys were determined to ride "Aquaman Splashdown" even though it was cold.  We got soaked and were pretty cold but it didn't stop us.  The lines were a little long Friday night since there was a concert that night, but we made the best of it.

Saturday morning the 5 of us headed back to the park.  We did the rest of the rides we wanted to ride, everyone picked one & then we did whatever smaller rides we could on the way.  This included Daniel's first big roller coaster (he finally makes 48 inches).  He and I rode "The New Texas Giant" and he said it was awesome!  We probably would have rode again but the lines were just too long.  He said the best part was the giant drop at the beginning.

We did everything we wanted to do and finished up about 4:00 to head out to my brother's house for the rest of our week in TX.  Before leaving Arlington, we went and drove around Cowboys Stadium.  We had planned to do a tour while we were there but the stadium was closed to tours the entire month of March.  So we had to settle for driving around, taking a few pictures & browsing the Pro Shop.  Next time we go down we will be sure the stadium is open so we can go there!

After that we headed up to my brother's house, about 30 miles north of Dallas.  We had a delicious dinner and spent some time with the family.  We were all pretty tired and headed to bed early.  Plus we had to get ready for the Easter Bunny the next day!!  I think this is a good stopping point.  I'll be back later this week with part 2.