THE NEWTON'S

The title say's it all... we really did tour California, central, northern and southern.  We left on Thursday, May 23rd- and got back on Sunday, June 9th... 18 days full of fun! (This will probably take me a few days to write up everything... keep checking back! :)) Thursday, May 23rd- The kids and I had a goal to leave by 6am... we got on the road by 6:35 which I think was a great accomplishment since I had been up till 1am the night before finishing our packing... without Rich there to prod kids out of bed (and realistically- to prod me out of bed), it was hard to wake up and get going- so the 30 minutes behind schedule was almost miraculous! :) With just the kids and I in the car it goes pretty smoothly.  Alex get's the whole back row to himself and has plenty of space to spread out.  Ashley get's to be the food boss up front and pass out snacks to everyone, and Alyssa and Angela get to hang out in the middle and control the movies.  We were able to make it to...

  I snapped this picture at 6:30am on our way out of town yesterday morning.  Minutes later I turned right, and drove straight through those black dark clouds...   After the storms over the weekend and Monday's F5 everyone in OK is jumpy at the sign of clouds, I do admit I had my phone right there up front with me refreshing the radar and weather feed to make sure they were "safe" clouds as we drove into them.   Our road trips have changed and evolved through the years.  I started solo road trips with the kids back when the kids were little... three hours here, four there, seven was really long.  As they got older- I got more confident that they wouldn't argue the entire drive.  We went 12 hours to visit my sister, and an 18 hour trip split into 10 hours and 8 hours stopping with family for one night.    Yesterday we made a new record- 15 hours in the car with me and my four kids....

Last weekend we had some visitors stay with us for the weekend.  A good friend and her hubby had a wedding out of town so we had their three kids and little dog from Thurs to Sunday.   I want to remember how much fun the kids had.   Angela loved having a little sister and brother for the weekend to play with and referee between.  Alyssa was thrilled to have her best friend and time to hang out with her.    I had an exhaustingly fun time with seven kids for the weekend.  Grocery shopping with a three year old, lego's, trains, coloring books and disney jr.  Baths, carseats, snacks, bedtime stories, and sitting in the dark waiting for kids to go to sleep. I'll do it again, but when it was over, I was happy to go back to just my four kids.  :)

Three of the kids have projects due this week...   One more week of school and then it's done! :)

I spend my Tuesday nights sitting in a hard metal chair watching Alyssa beam as she learns to twist, jump and balance her way across and around mats, trampolines, balance beams, and bars... A foot injury that caused her to want to use crutches got suddenly better once the X-ray showed no break and she had gymnastics the next day. The foot was still red and a bit swollen, but she was not going to miss her Tuesday night!

We decided to end our spring break with a quick unplanned trip down to Dallas. We decided on wed night to do something, then Thursday finalized our plans, packed in about an hour and hit the road southward. A stop at our favorite buffet we don't have up here in Oklahoma- Sweet Tomatoes, and then to the hotel to get some sleep for our adventures on Friday. Friday we got up, filled up at breakfast and headed to Six Flags over Texas! The forecast was for possible rain in the morning warming up to 67 by afternoon. When it was still in the 50's around 2pm we decided we needed more layers. So we went back to the hotel and layered up and stopped at Walmart and hit the clearance racks to get more sweatshirts to layer on... Then headed back to the park to enjoy the rides. There's a big difference between 67 and 52 degrees which wound up being the high that day! A few more hours of rides and we were ready to thaw out and get dinner, and then most of the family ...

We have been staying busy this year.  Alyssa has finally been able to start her great love in life... gymnastics.  She has been cartwheeling and back bending to her hearts content every Tuesday night the past two months.  Tuesday is her most important day of the week right now that she makes sure she goes to school (not going to try and say she doesn't feel good) and gets things done so her Tuesday night is free to go to gymnastics.     After last year with no snow at all... everyone was thrilled that we were expecting snow this year... we had four times they thought we would get some snow, and unfortunately for the kids every single time the ground was so warm it melted within a day and we only got traces of the white stuff....  At least with our driveway they could still have some fun with the trace of snow we got. :) I was able to be a chaperone with Alyssa's class at the Oklahoma Science Museum.  Us mom's had kind of complai...