“They’ve Got Big, Long Road Out There…”

Over this past weekend, I had the chance to go with the majority of my family to visit my older brother, his wife, and their new baby near Dallas, TX. Talk about a great trip! It was an incredibly long drive both there and back, but it was totally worth it!

We left on Friday morning, and quickly jumped onto the interstate for the ride down. While the rest of the car was chatting and having a grand ol’ time, I was trying to work on a project for my job, which wasn’t as productive as I had hoped for.

As we worked our way through Missouri, we stopped in Springfield to meet one of my dad’s brothers and his wife for lunch. We had a nice, but brief, visit with them at the Golden Corral, and then got back in the car to knock out the rest of the drive.

Somewhere around 11pm, we finally pulled up in front of my brother’s house and it wasn’t a moment too soon. I’m definitely not a huge fan of such long drives… My sister-in-law had a bunch of family in town, too, so she and the baby were over visiting with them for a while after we arrived. We, of course, waited for her to get home so we could see the baby that night, and our excitement provided sufficient energy to keep us up well past 1:30am after the ladies returned home. We passed my niece around the room, and finally called it a night.

We all slept WAY in on Saturday morning, but then got up and made some breakfast, and continued to pass the baby around . What ELSE are you supposed to do in that situation?

For the remainder of Saturday, we really just enjoyed each other’s company and hung out. I became the official driver, so I drove around to various places and eventually took my mom and sister to a mall for some gift shopping. i don’t really think that this mall was anything special to the locals, but it was 100 times better than anything we have near my own home. It was a more traditional mall, whith all of the storefronts on the IN-side, but it had such a good variety of stores that it put most malls to shame. I’m not a huge fan of shopping malls, but I AM a fan of this one.

My dining habits were not the most consistent; for example, at 10pm on Saturday, I took one of my brothers with me to get a burrito from Chipotle and a burger from Whataburger. Why? Well, ’cause I wanted both and didn’t want to compromise. I may not have mentioned this previously, but I’m a complete Chipotle addict, and this visit was just as amazing as any other. As for Whataburger, it was my first visit/taste, and it is definitely something that I’ll have again if I can. It wasn’t the most amazing burger in the world, but it was definitely tasty and well-worth the trip.

Sunday was a very lazy morning. We needed to be at church at about 1pm, but we were all up by 7:30 or so. We lounged about, passed the kid around, and talked and laughed with each other. At church, we were joined by my sister-in-law’s family and a few of their friends. Most notably, the amazing, funny, and amazingLY funny WhiteEyebrows was present. (Yes, that was a shameless shout-out.) After church, the whole clan raced over to my brother’s home for a late lunch. Unfortunately, though, WhiteEyebrows wasn’t able to join us… and he was missed by all. (Wow – a shout-out and a brown-nose all in the same paragraph )

We definitely enjoyed the company of the other family. They are a fun, lively group, and they are totally friendly. Good times, good times! After things settled down again, we got back into the ritual of passing the baby around, and that lasted for the rest of the evening (and actually into the wee hours of the morning).

Monday morning really just consisted of us getting ready to leave. My brother got up and cooked breakfast and my sister-in-law got the baby up for us to pass around once more. We got the van all loaded up, and we were off. It was so nice to visit, and we’ll be back down there as soon as we possibly can!

NOTE: I’ll post a few pictures of the baby when I get a chance… we probably have a hundred of ‘em!