Texas Two-Day

Being here in Mississippi we're far from friends and family. So, you can imagine how excited we iswere to discover that some of our friends from college live just a few hours away in Tyler, Texas. Some of mine and Andy's greatest memories during our courtship involve our Crazy Friend David (his official title), and his wife Shelly is his perfect match. We didn't get the chance to hang out with Shelly much in college, but after this weekend, we look forward to more fun visits with our friends (and their adorable little girl).

We didn't really have an agenda, more than anything we just wanted to hang out. But, in researching Tyler I discovered it's home to one of the 25 best children's museums in the country (according to Parents magazine). Uh, yes please! For $6 a piece (Jax was free) our kids got to run, pretend, destroy, dig for dinosaur bones, build towers... so fun!

Both kids really loved the little "town." It included a grocery store, fire truck, ambulance, veterinarian's office, pastry shop, theatre (complete with dress-up), auto garage (with a real car), restaurant, construction site, airplane, I'm sure I'm missing some things.

After over an hour playing pretend and Ava fixing several broken bones (and nursing several of her own) and Jax repeatedly buckling and unbuckling the seatbelts in the car, we headed over to the science area. Personally, I wish we had spent more time here. It had caves, dino bones, a dino dig site, a ship, a ball roller coaster, building areas, a TV station... I'm really not doing it justice.

Neither of our kids wanted to leave, despite the obvious exhaustion on their faces. Ava has already made me promise to take her back. Thank goodness we have a reason other than the museum to head back to Tyler... otherwise, that'd be one long trip to the museum.

While the kids slept, the grown-ups got to spend some good quality time together, chatting, laughing, reminiscing, eating ice cream (you have to know David and Shelly to know how important this is) and staying up much later than we should. A few years ago, I could have stayed up until 3:30 a.m., gotten up three hours later and functioned fine the rest of the day. Two kids and a few birthdays later and all of a sudden my body is too old. We all took naps that afternoon, could barely stay awake that night and spent a few days recovering. Ahhh, but it was worth it.

Thanks friends for the wonderful weekend. We owe you a few tubs of ice cream!