For Spring Break Emily was headed on her 15 year old trip to India with Greg so I told Kate, "You are a Senior. Where do you want to go in the lower forty-eight?" She picked Arkansas to see Spencer and his family. So Thursday we cut out of school early and headed south. We got to their house around 9:00pm. We got the downstairs tour, pet the cats, looked for deer, and stayed up way to late catching up.
The next morning we woke up early to see the kids off to school. Winston didn't remember us but was pretty excited that we would still be here when he got home from school.
We had a lazy morning chatting, touring the outside, upstairs, and then getting crepes for breakfast. After crepes we tour Bentonville and made a visit to the Crystal Bridges American Art Museum (free thanks to Walmart donations). The architecture of the museum is incredible, allowing it to be built along the river. I can imagine it is gorgeous when the trees are green.
This piece of art was begging for a photo. Winston asked me later if Lily wanted to ride that chicken- I'm pretty sure we all wanted to climb on.
This Frank Lloyd Wright designed home was moved here from New Jersey where it was being destroyed by frequent flooding. We got to take a quick walk around the less than 800 square feet. It was beautiful and practical.
After that we grabbed delicious salads for lunch and picked up Winston from school. That night we enjoyed time with the kids, played lots of games, and stayed up too late talking.
Saturday we got moving to eat breakfast in town. Lily's acai bowl looked so delicious the cousins had to order their own to share.
Breakfast was followed by the grand reopening of the Walmart museum, which is always free. We learned a lot about Sam Walton and the kids enjoyed this replica of his truck.
The museum is housed in the first store Walton opened - The Walton five and dime.
The kids loved looking at all the old products on display and I was impressed with Sam Walton's commitment to his employees and customers. The kids got to design their own Walmart logo sticker,
and get decked out with Walmart stuff on this random display.
The museum ended with a hologram of Sam Walton where he answers questions and tells stories. It was pretty cool actually.
I'm sure the kids favorite part was the ice cream shop at the museum's exit. One scoop was $1.30 and the ice cream was still pretty good. We had some happy kiddos.
From there we took a 40 minute drive to the Bluff Dweller's Cave in Missouri. Our guide was entertaining enough and didn't get too grouchy with Winston when he just couldn't help but touch the rocks.
The most interesting part was when the guide played part of the cave features like drums. I didn't get a pic but he tapped on very specific places on this one feature and it sounded like bongos, ??. I've been in a lot of caves and never heard that before - very cool.
After the cave we took a 20 minute detour to get a new state for all the kiddos.
And we had to get a pic going back into Arkansas - the girls were set on throwing this pic in Emmy's face - I think she'd still rather be in India.
After all the driving we got the wiggles out at the climbing gym. Mckenzie and Emma were all over it. Lily took a little warming up but once she got to the top once she was on a roll and mastered 5 different paths. She wants to go again when we get home.
Winston did some climbing too, and wrestling, and running, and laughing. On the way home he told Lily all about his volcano cake that was cooking in the oven at home and how we had to get it out so it wouldn't burn.
Mckenzie got to stay up and watch Despicable Me 2 (inspired by me calling Winston a purple minion on the way home) with us. The adults were planning to talk but got sucked into the movie.
Sunday morning the kids enjoyed lazy time together and some video games before church. At dinner Emma was being shy (or stubborn) about praying and we were all awkwardly waiting for her to being when Winston started giving her suggestions like "Say, Heavenly Father, thankful for the food." I couldn't keep it together and started everyone laughing.
We played the name game with everyone and then some games with just the big kids and we enjoyed some delicious lava cakes made by Kenzie and Keeley before the kids went to bed. Spencer had Winston convinced we were going to put in real lava. I sent the girls to bed around 9:30 and stayed up till 3:00 chatting with Spencer and Keeley. And I still managed to get up before 7 to say bye to the kids.
We were sad to say bye to Arkansas and the Dame party but were excited to explore Memphis. I had to use some caffeine pills to get us there safety but we made the 5 hours to Tennessee!
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