A week at grandma and grandpa’s

I am way behind on my blogging.  I didn’t blog at all while we were on the trip to MO and IL, and now I have to catch up.  I’m sorting through and editing 1800 pictures that I took on the trip so it might take me a while to get these blogs done.  But I’m working on them!

My parents recently moved to MO, a little bit south of Branson.  They live on Table Rock Lake and have lots of fun “toys” to play with – a Gator, a boat, a dirt bike (when it’s running), etc.  It’s probably the ideal “grandparent” location.  Abbie was VERY excited to go see grammy and grampy as she calls them, and she had a great time.  Ben was terrified of everything at first, but he soon grew to like all the toys too.

My favorite “toy” at their house is my piano, which I still would like to be at my house.  Yes, I realize they have the perfect location for it, but they never play it and the only reason they want it is basically for decoration.  I miss playing it a lot and lugged about 20lbs of music there so I could play it a little.  It is a little out of tune right now though, so that was a bummer.  Hopefully when we put Abbie into piano lessons in a few years, my parents will give us my piano so we can put it to use.  I miss it and I miss playing, although I have been playing our digital piano a bit more recently, and so has Mark.

It was fun to get out on the boat a few times.  Abbie can’t get enough of the boat.  She’s just like I was at her age, but I still enjoy going on the boat now too.  And their deck would be perfect in much cooler, less humid weather.  All they need are some comfortable chairs to curl up in out there to read a book.  It was fun to watch storms roll in at their house.  Being in Phoenix, we don’t get storms, at least not this time of year, so I enjoyed listening to the rain and thunder.

 

Its too bad plane tickets are so expensive over here.  We all went to Ireland for less than $120 per person round trip from Italy, but tickets from PHX to Branson are at least $300 per person, which really limits how often we can go visit.  And I’m really bummed that Mark wasn’t able to join us.  He had to stay home and work for this part of the trip and he’s never been to my parents new house.  Hopefully someday we’ll all be able to go there for a vacation.

Oh, and the plane ride there with both kids by myself wasn’t too bad at all!  They were both good and we had just enough time to stop to go to the bathroom, change Ben, grab some food at McDonald’s and run to our next flight during our layover.  The hardest part was trying to carry the car seat, diaper bag, camera equipment bag and roll on suitcase down the narrow aisles of the planes but we made it!  The kids both did great and Abbie talked some lady’s ear off on the 2nd flight.  That girl talks to anyone!