Keeping Up With...Family (Texas Trip Recap Part 3)

If you missed the start of the trip, you can read about it here and here.

Tuesday we decided to check out Fort Worth.  We had heard about the parade of the longhorns so we hit the road early to make sure we got there in time for that.  It was pretty cool to see the parade, but it was only about 5 minutes.  The biggest excitement was when one of the longhorns tried to mount another one right in front of all of us on the street!!  I thought I was going to have to explain the birds and the bees and the bulls.  ;) 

After the parade we walked around checking out the stockyards and then headed to the cow pen maze, which the boys were really looking forward to.  It was similar to a corn maze but it was made out of wooden cow pens.  You had to find the 4 letters of the word "maze" and then get out.  We did it in just over 30 minutes.  The boys loved it, especially Zak who was super excited to find the "Z."  It made me dizzy to walk around the pens but it was fun to try to figure it out.

After the maze I had possibly the highlight of the trip for me...I rode my first (and probably last) mechanical bull.  The boys really wanted someone to do it and they were trying to get my mom to do it but she wouldn't.  So I decided to give it a go.  It was a lot harder than I thought it would be!  But it was also a ton of fun!!  I stayed on for just about 40 seconds.  I think you can see the hilarious video here.  I'm glad I can say that I did it!!

It was hard to follow that excitement but we did some shopping, sight seeing and enjoyed a pretty good BBQ lunch before wrapping it up for the day.  My parents and brother checked out the Cowboy Hall of Fame but we figured the boys wouldn't be interested in that so we headed home.  On our way to the car we met an actual cowboy.  The boys were all amazed, AJ was even brave enough to pet the horse.

Fort Worth was a neat little town but I'm not sure I would go back.  It felt very tourist trappy and they nickel and dimed you for a lot.  While that is obviously the point of the town, it felt like a lot of money for not a lot of fun or education.  I'm glad we checked it out and it was a really nice way to spend the day, but it wouldn't be on my repeat visit list.  Well except maybe for riding the mechanical bull again.

As you can see, we had been pretty much non stop since we left Ohio on this trip.  We decided to take Wednesday to catch our breath and catch up on a few housekeeping things.  I did some laundry and caught up on some emails.  Adrian checked in at work.  My nieces went to school for the day.  The boys played and watched TV.  Adrian, Jon and my Dad did take all the kids bowling later that afternoon and everyone had a really fun time there.  It was nice to have a break in the action before one more day in Texas and then hitting the road back home.

I think I'll end there and finish up in part 4 with our trip to the Lego Discovery Center and then our trip home.