A few weeks ago, my sister and I loaded up my kids and headed to Wytheville, Virginia!
We figured it would be a long drive with 4 kids 4 years old and under, but a week at Grandma and Grandpa's would be well worth it!
We left on a Friday morning and arrived Saturday around 3 pm. Everyone did pretty well on the drive. Well, Tripp had some major issues and Cash had to pee every half hour, but other than that...we were good.
We did have a horrid rest stop story along the way.
We had a great idea to stop, get some car side to go at Chillis and take our food to a park so the kids could run around for a little while.
We found a park using the GPS. When we arrived we were happy to see a slide and swings which are Tripp's favorite. Little buddy was finally going to get out of the terrible restraints of his car seat and be able to play for a while!
You'd think that this park in the middle of a neighborhood would be crawling with kids.
It wasn't.
A clue maybe?
Maybe this park wasn't so great after all, but we didn't catch onto the first clue.
We parked and got everyone unloaded.
We were carrying a huge bag of food, the diaper bag, Drew in her car seat and holding hands with the other three.
We crossed the street and started to cross the grass to get to the park area.
We noticed a little valley of water surrounding the park, kind of like a moat you would see around a castle. It was just like that.
There was quite a bit of water and I didn't want the kids to get all wet so we thought we would be smart and walk ALL the way around the park to the sidewalk to avoid the muddy, water mess.
I don't know why we thought the area around the equipment would be any less wet and muddy, but we did and we kept walking.
We got off the sidewalk and into the grass, which was practically up to our knees.
Again, duh.
You can't mow grass when its a muddy mess.
You'd think we'd take the hint that this park was not up to playing condition.
Instead, we had the bright idea to just take their shoes and socks off and roll up their pants. Their feet would be easy enough to dry off.
Well, that would have been all good if it was just water and wet grass we were dealing with.
We were dealing with mud.
A muddy, mud mess.
We started walking and we just sunk into the ground.
I lost my flip flops twice because they got stuck in the muck.
Tripp was walking and he got stuck in the mud. He was screaming "Disgusting! Disgusting!" and couldn't move.
Sarah makes it to the swings which was kind of like a little island in the middle of this swamp. She puts down the bag of food and goes back to rescue Tripp.
I finally fish my shoe out of the mud for the second time and make it to the "island" as well. I probably would have left my shoe in the mud if it hadn't been the only pair I brought with me.
We all made it to the island and we let the kids swing for a few minutes. None of them were overly thrilled about the swings by this time. They were too worried about the mud on their feet and legs.
Sarah and I had to figure our plan of attack on how to get back to the car before being eaten alive by all the bugs.
We decided to just cut across the "moat" this time. I mean we were all muddy anyway and we just wanted back into the car, far away from this park and out of Illinois!
Sarah grabbed Drew and the food and took off towards the car. I walked the other 3 to the edge of the moat and after Sarah put Drew in the car, she came back to get the others. We just handed the kids over the moat and made our way back to the car.
We then used almost the entire box of wipes, some paper towels and a bottle of water to wash off our feet.
We spent about 20 minutes getting cleaned off and buckled back into our seats.
We headed off to CVS to get some more cleaning supplies.
So instead of enjoying a nice dinner at a park, we ate cold food in the car of the CVS parking lot while still feeling like we were being eaten by bugs.
I wish I could have taken some pictures or video of this ordeal. It was really crazy and I felt like we were in a movie or something. My retelling of our experience does not do it justice.
It was so bad.
Fun times.
Despite our trip, we had a great time in Virginia.
We had a special Mother's Day breakfast with mimosas!
Grandpa set up "the beach" with a bounce house, a pool, a bubble machine and a tent for some shade. We spent all day playing outside and had so much fun!
We went to visit Grandma and Grandpa's friends at work.
On day we drove to Tennessee to play at a huge play place with bounce houses, bowling, video games, play areas and more.
We went to visit Darin's best friend growing up, Mike Burton. He was Darin's best man at our wedding. He lives about an hour away from my parents in a little town called Floyd. He had never met any of our kids so we met him for dinner. We went to a great local pizza place and then Mike took the kids to the toy store in town and let them each pick out a surprise!
We then stopped by the Floyd Country store for a lollipop.
Floyd is the cutest little town.
No Walmarts, Targets, McDonalds...nothing, but local Floyd shops, eateries, sidewalk markets and musicians along the downtown strip playing music.
On our last day we took the kids to the Safari Park.
We were loaded into a bus with our "zoo chow" and got ready to see the animals.
We fed zebras, ostriches, camels, water buffalo, bison and more.
It was a little scary at first. The ostriches are pretty aggressive and that bison was huge!!!
Despite a little nip to Riley's hand by the ostrich, we had a lot of fun.
Here are some pictures of our visit.
I wish I could have taken more, but of course my camera died the first day we were there and I didn't bring my charger so I had to use my dad's camera from like the 70's.
Okay, so its not that old, but its definitely not a newer model.
I don't remember the last time I had to put my eye up to the camera to take a picture.
It felt really weird.
Anyway...
Such is life...as my dad would say.
Thanks Grandpa and Grandma!
We had a great time!
