The Grand Tour

The Grand Tour: Historically wealthy Americans who had recently graduated from High School would take some time touring around Europe.

The Grand Prairie Tour: The kids have yet to start school, we are far from wealthy and we will be closer to Paris, Texas than Paris, France.

7 States, 3000 miles, 3 five year olds, 2 weeks and 1 crazy mom.

If I'm not crazy yet. I'm sure I will be by the end of the trip!

Douglas has 2 trade shows in Back to Back weeks in February. I have talked for years about wanting to take Sam, Leona and Gabe to Texas to visit Grandpa Walt and Grandma Leona.

They spend the winters in the VERY tip of Texas. When you leave South Dakota and you reach the Texas border you are only HALF way to their winter nest.

Douglas and I were down there several years ago. They live in a retirement community down there. The MOST exciting thing in Texas...visits from family. The best kind of visits? Grand children.

I can't even imagine the kind of riot that 5 year old triplets will cause.

I'm envisioning some kind of Beatle Mania. Er, maybe Elvis mania? Nope. Laurence Welk mania. Oh yes. Now we're talking the right era.

The kids are SO excited about going to see Grandma and Grandpa. They've really missed them. They are excited about going to the beach.

And we are excited to go somewhere warm. Anywhere is warmer than here. Our nice weather lasted 2 days. This week is supposed to be in the single digits. With snow. Maybe some wind.

But I'm going to smile all week. I'll be packing for somewhere warmer.

On our trip we will be staying with a whole handful of friends and family. We're taking several days to travel down and several days to travel back.

All four of us are SO excited about all of the people we'll see, the fun we'll have and the memories we'll make.

We've traveled so much in the last 5 years. I'm not worried at all about the trip. My kids are wonderful travelers. We've got a dvd player in the car so we can chill out to movies. We sing silly songs and they are busy with stories, stickers, snacks and lots of laughter.

Our longest day is only about 600 miles.

Piece of cake.

I'm sure we'll have some unexpected adversities. There are always things that don't go quite as planned. We'll take them as they come. That's what you do on an adventure.

I'm excited now...I just hope I don't look this beat up when we make it back to South Dakota!
P.S. Sam is quite proud of his war wounds. He gets to drink through a straw. Gabe and Leona have let him pick out a movie and shared their favorite buddies. And today at Sunday school the first thing he did was run over to Ruby, with her sweet smile and beautiful long blonde hair, and announce, "Ruby, I went flying like a frisbee and then the frisbee CRASHED!"

Battle scars are very, very cool. Even to 5 year old girls.