Destination Arkansas!

This summer we decided to make the trip back to see Justin's awesome family in Arkansas! This is my little families longest trip ever taken with a total mileage on the car of 3,742 miles. I was pretty excited about that...I am not sure why? Anyway I digress, the Arkansas Platt's (as we so lovingly refer to them) come to AZ every other year for a reunion in St. Johns. We decided in 2009 that we were going to make the voyage to AR for the in between year! We as in Jeremy, Karrie, Drew, & Cyndi. The other siblings really wanted to go too but with scheduling 11 different family schedules and trying to sync all of them some of the fam couldn't go. But don't worry 2012 is the year for ALL of us...Are you ready AR Platt's?

The first part of the trip was VERY LONG...we promised we would find a tornado for Jarred since he could go...well on our way into TX we spotted one a far distance away so I grabbed for my good camera and found out it was broken so this post will be mostly words (journal for a better description) I did get the pic of the tornado I just can't get it off the camera...maybe Justin will do that for me?

We decided early in the planning for this trip that we would stop in San Antonio for 2 reasons 1st reason is my friend Julie lives there and I could get to see her and play:) Julie is one of the most genuine people and I love her! We stayed in SA for 2 nights and it was awesome. The first day I insisted that we go to the Alamo! This is a Crockett thing...I think you can guess why? So the first day in SA we went downtown and toured the Alamo there was a line into the place which made Julie say "this has never happened before"! Funny the line didn't take that long. If you have never been to the Alamo there isn't much to see and the tour ends pretty quickly! Once out side the kids played on the cannon's and looked at the fish and we just stayed in the shade to stay cool. We were only there for an hour or so. After the Alamo we wanted to tour downtown so we took the riverboat tour.

The kids were soooo excited about it. We saw the neatest things and we also saw the weirdest building...I don't even know how to describe it. When you look at it from land level (or as for us boat level) it looks like a flat building but it is a hospital...I didn't understand how that worked? After the morning downtown I talked Justin into taking the kids to SEA WORLD. This was very exciting for the kids as for myself. They loved the Shamu shows and it was really nice being sprayed with nasty tank freezing cold water just to cool off a bit.

It was a pretty hot day we picked to go touring! Funny story: We were enjoying the show I looked over and Emie was just so excited laughing and having a fun time (she loves any animal) sitting next to Michelle. When Shamu came to splash our end of the arena Emie got SOAKED! and this was her reaction she cryed for a little while longer it was so funny! After the fun Shamu show I decided that we should take the kids to see the sea lions you know...no so traumatic for the younger ones...Emie really liked the funny sea lions then, I think we made up for Shamu! Sea world lasted the rest of the day we went to one more Shamu show that Emie loved again and hated being soaked again! Michelle insisted on being early for that show so we could get front row seats...they found very good soak zone seats! The kids loved riding the roller coasters and playing in the water at Sea World...it was a great treat for the whole family! That night we took Julie out to dinner at a VERY YUMMY Mexican food restaurant I really want to go there again it was sooo good!
The next morning we said our goodbyes to Jules and took off to AR! The drive was so pretty it makes me want to move to TX or AR.

We arrived in Texarkana, AR later in the evening of Sunday night. We sat around visiting with everyone for a few hours then headed off to bed. Brad and Suzanne practically had a hotel for us to stay in their house is beautiful and we had a finished room with bathroom above the garage to stay in...Jeremy and Karrie we just a hour or so behind us so they got the RV out back, which is totally decked out too! Beds bathroom and kitchen. Thanks to Brad and Suzanne we had a wonderful stay at the Rolling Hills Ranch!

On Monday morning we had sort-of a late start what with everyone traveling so much on Sunday. I am not sure what we did and in the order we did it in but I will try and tell you all the fun we had! Jeremy wanted to go explore the ranch and took a 4 wheeler out to see everything and Justin was going to be next...we waited and waited and waited and joked about Jeremy getting stuck somewhere when the next moment we saw Jeremy come into the house soaking wet saying he got the 4 wheeler stuck and just hiked about 4 miles out of the ranch:) We had to give him heck about that and when Brad got home they went and retrieved the 4 wheeler. That night we had a really fun Family Home Evening with all the Platt's who live out in AR/TX. HJ and Cori, with Nick! Then Kevin and Jileen and there 3 boys! We played games and visited and then it was time for bed again!

On Tuesday morning Suzanne, Victoria and Cole showed us the Cadoe river...We went canoeing down the river! It was so much fun aside from the tipping of the canoe and almost losing Parker to the current (thank heavens for life jackets) and the animal life...the bugs are incredible out there! The river was so much fun we skipped rocks, Jeremy won that non-contest, ate lunch, just had such a great time!

Here we are waiting for our ride up the river!

Brad and Suzanne have a pool so when we arrived home we "bathed" the kids!

Wednesday morning we woke up early and headed even further east to Memphis, TN. Justin has another cousin, Whitney, who lives there so we decided since we were going to be that close why not go see them...little did we know the trip was going to take a little longer than expected, but it was totally worth it. We headed out to Memphis with the intent on seeing Graceland too! When we arrived Justin had NO desire to tour Elvis' house so I hopped out and toured with Jeremy and Karrie and their kiddo's. I liked it I will never need to do it again but I thought it was fun and interesting! Elvis was a weirdo when you see and hear things but who isn't is some respect!

Here is The Mansion...it was actually really small, Elvis added a few rooms onto the back. But the land was beautiful!

Here was my favorite room in the mansion...it used to be Elvis' racquetball court (I know) but it is covered from wall to wall floor to ceiling in records pictures costumes! I thought it was amazing!

After Graceland we headed over to Whitney and Josh's where they took us all out to eat at an awesome BBQ joint in Memphis. It was really yummy! After dinner we went back to W&J's house they have the cutes little house. IT really isn't that little they were able to sleep to more families of 6 on BEDS and air mattresses. We got up on Thursday morning and headed to downtown Memphis. We saw the ducks at the Peabody Hotel. The Peabody Hotel is the hotel where ducks live in the fountain in the lobby! It was really cute to see these little ducks the kids liked it anyway!

We then walked a bit down Beale street. Then we had to head out back to Texarkana!

That night we went right over to HJ and Cori's house where we had a swim party and lots of food and desert! We had some great conversations and lots of laughs!

Friday was so exciting we had the chance to fly in HJ's medical practices airplane! Eli didn't want to go he wanted to stay and play with Jake and Cole on the ranch well his mean mom made him go and I think he was ok in the end!

We all headed over to the hanger at the airport, all of a sudden there was a down pour of rain so the plane was "grounded" for about 20 minutes. AR weather is sort-of like AZ's in that respect. Here it rains for 5 minutes then stops and is sunny again. There is went on a little longer than 5 minutes but when it stopped and the sun came out MAN WAS IT MUGGY!! Cori has a really nice camera so she took some really great pictures of us playing in the hanger waiting for our turn in the plane, and some GREAT pictures of the kids monkeying around under the deck!

This one of Parker is sooo good! I always said we missed our window of opportunity to get him into modeling but after this I think we should really try!

What do you think?

Here is Emie Cori was really proud of this pic because of the splash in the picture! She was very patient with Emie who didn't want her picture taken!

Here is Michelle she is such a sweet heart and had a blast posing for pictures for Cori!

Here is Eli loving being a monkey too! I have such a cute group!

This is Victoria she loved all the little girls in the house! She did hair and she helped make jewelry (along with Suzanne and her supplies). She just was the best kid and Emie loved hanging out with her...of course she wouldn't show it in the picture!

Ohh how handsome!! Am I lucky or what??

Here we all are right before our flights...we mixed it all up a bit and just had such a great time! Justin actually got to fly for a bit. Parker and Emie(picture missing will find it soon)went with him and Justin said Parker didn't stop talking the whole time...he kept asking if the guys in the tower could hear him and if us in the hanger could hear him. I could totally see him doing that which make it really funny to me!

Saturday was fun we toured the ranch..shot guns I finally shot a skeet after about 25 trys. LOTS of saved clay targets. Saw the house Brad and Kevin and HJ and the rest of them grew up in. We had just such a great time winding down for our departure on Sunday morning. For dinner they took us to a local BBQ place called Big Jakes BBQ. It was REALLY GOOD too! After eating dinner we walked over to a local park where this old train car was we took some great pictures of the whole group I only have a few since my camera wasn't working well! I thought the pictures of the whole family walking back to the resturant on the railroad tracks was so cute!




We headed back to the ranch for a fireworks show put on by Brad and Kevin! It was AMAZING! Just as good as I have ever seen.

The next morning we packed up and headed out. What a wonderful week Thank you SOO much to our Awesome Arkanasa and Texas family to host so many people for so long it was so fun to see you all I missed you as soon as we left! Thanks so much!