All Things Abe... Lincoln That Is

We're baaaack!  We finally made it home last night about 1:00 am.  It was a long day of driving but I just kept thinking, "In a week we're going to be doing this all again but the next trip is going to be twice as long."  Yikes!

Well, here I am sitting up at 12:15 wide awake.

I think it's a result of staying up until the wee hours of the morning for the past week playing this.

While sipping on this.

Well, if I'm going to be awake I might as well make myself useful and try to get things caught up around here:

We had a great time exploring all things Lincoln-like earlier last week.  

First we toured the Lincoln's New Salem Historical Site in Petersburg, Illinois .

It was a really cool place.  Abe himself lived here for six years when he was young.  

They did a great job of recreating what the town probably looked like during that time.

Here's my Sister In Love Jen being the teacher in the school house.

After that we headed over to the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois.  Here we are just hanging out with the Lincoln's.  This picture was taken at the end of the day.  Can you tell?  Parker and Ava were beyond done. 

Brooke got a clipboard when we first arrived with a list of "detective" questions.  She was all over that. She took it VERY seriously.

Grandma and Auntie Jen helping.

There were so many cool things to see and I really learned a lot in the time we where there.

So did Brookie.  She turned in her answers and she got an official "History Detective" certificate.  What a great idea.  

After we got done there we all headed over to The Cracker Barrel for some dinner.  And that's where I saw these little beauties.  That's high class white trash right there!

Sorry we're not home right now. We're vacationing with family, so leave a message and we'll call you baaaack!

Well it's that time of the year again; Vacation Time!  Every Summer I warn ya that I might not be hanging around here much because I'm preoccupied with making memories with my family.  Looks like this Summer is going to be no different.

We left Texas Saturday morning at the butt crack of dawn and didn't stop driving until we landed ourselves in Illinois late that night.  

After having gone to bed at 1 am the night before, and getting up at 4:30 to a early start on the road- this Mama was wiped.  Starbucks on this day was a necessity not a perk.

Oh and this picture is really fuzzy but I had to post it because Brian and I about died laughing at one point during the trip.  You might remember that we had a DVD player installed in our car right before we left.  Well wireless headphones will work with it so I ran out and bought some for our trip. Brian said he absolutely was not listening to Strawberry Shortcake our whole trip(s).  

Well a little while into our trip I laid my seat back to try to rest a little and the kids were watching Cars.  Right when I started falling asleep Parker started hollering up to the front seat "Hey Mom!  You wike dat song Mama?  You hear dat Mama?" over and over again.  Brian kept telling him "Quiet Mommy is sleeping but I don't think Parker could hear him with those headphones on.

Finally I sat up and looked at the TV because I do remember there is some music in that movie but I didn't think there was that much.  I told him to pass up his headphones so I could hear what he was listening too.  He kept telling me "No!  I wistening to da music!" 

Well when I finally got ahold of those things and put them up to my ear all I heard was some kind of Chinese rap music.  It was hilarious.  He must have hit the scan button on the headphones and picked up some kind of radio station along the way.  He had probably been listening to that for at least a good 30 minutes.  We all had a good laugh about that.

One of the stops we made along the way was to see Brian's old Frat house.  They had just got done doing some renovations to it and he wanted to check it out.  It was storming really bad and the poor guy got soaked just running up to the front door.  I mean it literally looked like he had stood under a garden hose.  Unfortunately no one was there so we didn't get to go inside.  

We went by the Arch in Saint Louis just as the sun was setting and it was beautiful. 

By the time we got to Grandpa and Grandma's the kids were worn out.  This is how I found Brooke and Ava that night when I went to check on them.

We've been having tons of fun every day since we got here. 

And Parker finally has a little buddy to play boy toys with!  

And he's a cutie.  I am just loving spending time with this little guy.  He's the cutest little thing ever.  I'm one lucky Auntie!

So much fun!