Several months ago I received an email inviting us to a family reunion for Mike's side of the family. That email set the ball rolling for a long, but totally worth it, family adventure! I took the opportunity to book a hotel located in Abilene since it was right in the middle of all of the action! That was step one. Step two was getting our Great Dane and Rat Terrier to La Porte for their own mini vacation. Sounds easy right? Well that's until you try and load a 10 year old 150 pound dog that is having trouble with her hind legs into a Nissan Cube. Let's just say you have to have muscles!
Friday afternoon we were off! We passed Dairy Queen after Dairy Queen on the way to our first destination. I couldn't help taking a picture of the soda dispenser at the DQ that is very close to the Dublin Dr. Pepper bottling plant. It made my day and my taste buds!
We rolled into town just as the sun was going to down and checked into our hotel. As you can guess the kiddos had lots of energy. The people below us probably thought a family of elephants had just checked in! Going to bed that night in one room was quite interesting. Definitely a good idea of what our upcoming cruise is going to be like!
Saturday we slept in and then joined some of the family for breakfast. After that we headed to Aunt Connie's house in Clyde and met a few cousins... and then a few more cousins... and then a few more cousins! We were very lucky that there was a pool to entertain the kiddos as well as a diving board. M and C wore themselves out jumping over and over again. My little daredevil M barely escaped what would surely have been a trip to the ER for stitches when he tried jumping backwards like the big kids!
We then took some pictures to document and then enjoyed some watermelon before heading over to Merkel.
Mike and I have been together a little over 15 years. In those 15 years we have taken several trips to visit Mike's grandmother, Nana, who lives in Merkel, TX. The drive is a long one, but very beautiful with lots of small towns if you take the back roads. When I first started to visit there was one small motel, a family owned restaurant, and some other very small stores. For fun you watched the trains, dug for glass marbles left over from a train wreck years ago, or looked for the elusive Texas Horned Toad. Mike tells story after story about catching Horny Toads when he was little. I am started to think they are mythical creatures!
These days the motel has been replaced by a hotel and the city now boasts a Subway, Sonic, and Dairy Queen. Although M was thrilled with train after train passing by the kiddos spent most of their time traveling up and down Nana's stairs. I have to say that Poppy, Mike and M worked very hard on trying to find a Horny Toad, but those little boogers stayed well hidden from our view.
One thing that we did find was a Grandy's! To this day I crave their rolls and honey so we had to make a stop!
Sunday we once again got on the road so that we could bring our little adventure to an end! I think the easiest way to sum up this weekend is to use C's words...can we do that every month!
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