TEXAS!!

The last week of May we drove to Texas to visit my family. The boys were beyond excited to go visit Grandma and Grandpa, swim in their pool, see their Aunt Hannah and Uncle Wesley, and build Legos with Grandpa. They basically had our entire visit planned out in their little heads and the only thing standing between them and their glorious plans was a 12-hour drive. I have blogged about our travels in the past, and how Keagan is an especially marvelous little traveler and Finn is...well...NOT. A whole lot hasn't changed since our last trip. We hardly heard from Keagan. He was perfect. We heard from Finley while on the on-ramp to get on the parkway (2 minutes from our house) and he asked "When are we gonna be there?" Josh and I exchanged side-ways glances and I am sure we both thought this was a joke and he would fall asleep or get engrossed in his iPad or colors or movie. Nope. When I say he asked e.v.e.r.y. 2-3 minutes "How much longer?", "When are we gonna be there?", or exclaimed that "It is gonna take fo-eva!", "It's taking fo-a-hundred years!", I am not even kidding. Every 2-3 minutes for the entire 12 hour trip except for a 30 minute nap. Yep, that's it. 30 minutes. And when we ignored him or didn't answer he would scream at us, cry, or incessantly repeat the question. And when we DID answer him, he would get so angry he would thrash around. It was downright miserable. It didn't matter how we would respond, we couldn't make him happy and we had a loooooong time in the car. By the time we got to my parents house Josh and I were slap-happy exhausted, wiping tears from our eyes from laughing at the sheer idiocy of the drive. We would have been screaming at each other if we didn't laugh. I look back and seriously cannot believe that we endured that. It was hands-down the worst drive ever. By the looks of the below picture you would never believe how bad it was. Trust me. We were scared to death to drive home. No lie.

When we finally got to Texas and relaxed a little bit, and could look at our youngest child again, we started building Legos. (the boys were mentally checking off their to-do list.) Grandpa helped Finn, I ended up helping Keagan so we could go to bed at a decent time...!

The next day we all went to The Thinkery, a children's science/hands-on museum, in downtown Austin. The boys absolutely loved it! Finn still talks about it and asks at least daily when we can go back to The Thinkery again!

I think these two were bored, or tired of thinking at The Thinkery...or maybe they were contemplating the physics of the rope jungle gym in front of them?

The water-play area was super fun for the boys. Finley especially LOVED it. What I noticed between the two boys during our time in The Thinkery was that Finn just wanted to play and touch and run around like a crazy beast making sure he at least touched every station. Keagan actually spent time at the stations he visited, participated in making the station "work" and you could almost see the wheels spinning in his little head.  At the water area, the water builds in a tower of buckets until the buckets are full and they all empty so water comes splashing down...Keagan was very interested in timing the whole process just right and then would run away quickly. Finn just wanted to get everyone and everything as wet as he possibly could, including a little boy who stood in the same spot and begged the other kids around him to not get him wet. Not sure why this child insisted on staying in there but, bless his heart, he was gonna get soaked if Finn had anything to do with it. I could have stepped in, but I didn't want to get wet...and after all it IS water play!!

Next stop at the Thinkery was a produce stand/kitchen and Finn went NUTS! He loves to play pretend and spent a lot of time "shopping" and "cooking" up random meals and serving them to us. Keagan spent most of his time gathering eggs from the pretend chicken coop but was running so fast I couldn't get his picture!

 

I love-love-love watching my children be children. I expect a lot of them on a daily basis, and for the most part they are very well-behaved little boys. As most kids do, they live in a hectic.grown-up world and don't have the opportunity to be children as often as they should. This museum was fantastic in that everything and every station was with little kids in mind. One of our last stations was an art area, and Finn quickly painted on the window then ran off to find something else fun to do. Keagan sat for a long time with Josh and made his Aunt Hannah a card.