We spent the last week driving through Nebraska and Kansas visiting family and friends that we hadn't seen in awhile. Evan and Emma got to meet their newest cousin, Taben, and got plenty of time to get to know and play with Taben's older sister Kaylee. Since Evan and Kaylee are practically the same age, they spent the most time together. In fact, Evan's copy cat phase (where he likes to copy everything Emma does) was amplified by having another 3-year-old to want to copy too. Now he has even started saying things that she says (example, when asking "why" he now says "Why Mommy, why?").
Given the fact that Emma and Taben are fairly close in age (about 6 months apart), they spent some time playing together too.
My long-time friend Sarah visited us at the farm one day and brought her youngest daughter along, which Emma and her played a bit and shared a snack.
Emma loved meeting all the dogs at people's homes. Buster, at my friend Kiera's house, was a really sweet little dog, and then Maggie (my brother's dog) is also sweet but a lot bigger. Emma got a few wet licks to the face and/or a tail in her face from Maggie, but she still loved to go up and pet her.
We visited the SAC Air and Space Museum in Nebraska, which was a lot of fun for John, and the kids liked some of it too. I spent most of the time entertaining the kids at the toy and "ride" areas, to give John and Mitch time to actually read and see most of the airplane exhibits. My favorite, as was John's, was a big B36 "Peacemaker". I'm not kidding when I say it was big…it had six engines!
Emma and the three engines on the back of one wing of the big B36
Astronauts in training...
Building with the foam pieces in the kids area.
Having a snack in the cafeteria
We had a nice big (and yummy thick and fluffy buttermilk) pancake breakfast at Aunt Linda's house the morning that we were heading home. It was a great way to start our long trip back.
Breakfast at Linda's
We had to get some photos of Papa and Margaret with the grand kids. A challenging (dare I say futile?) exercise to get them to look the same way at the same time!
The drive took us about 12 hours in total, given we made several stops for food, fuel, and to let the kids play. We found a couple stops that had playgrounds right there for the kids. As we pulled into the second of those two stops, Evan saw the playground right away and started saying "I'm so glad, I'm so happy" about getting to go to the park. It was cute. After that particular stop, in Colby, KS, we ended up getting pulled over by a cop though. This is what happened:
As we were leaving the truck stop where we had let the kids play at the playground and where we got fuel and hot water to warm Emma's bottle, we pass the cop who had just pulled into the truck stop. He was going the opposite way as us, but he did look right at us. Then, not a second later, we hit a bump and our hot water cup with the baby bottle in it spills a bit. So I start trying to clean up that spill, while Evan was constantly saying "I want, I want, I want" (I can't remember what he wanted so badly, probably a snack or his Nabi). It was a typical form of chaos from having a car full of little ones. Not long after we get onto the interstate, John asks me "Are we getting pulled over?" Sure enough, the cop we had passed as we left the truck stop was on our tail with his lights on. We weren't sure where to pull over, as pulling over on a busy interstate is not that safe, but it would have been a long way to get to some other kind of turn off. we found a straight stretch and pulled off onto the shoulder. We were also really curious what we were being pulled over for. John thought maybe he hadn't come to a complete stop at one of the stop signs leaving the truck stop because it had been so chaotic in the car? Anyway, the officer came up and told us his name, and how he was with the Colby police department, and that he was pulling us over because we had failed to indicate at the two stops signs back in Colby.
So I guess John had come to a complete stop (the more he thought about it he knew he had), but given the chaos ensuing in our car, it is possible that John didn't use the turn signal at those stop signs. We cannot recall for sure. However, I was shocked that a city cop would pay that much attention to us and then follow us onto the interstate to pull us over for failure to use an indicator. Really, I think that cop knew he wanted to find a reason to pull us over before we'd even done anything remotely wrong because he had to have turned around very quickly (and in a very busy truck stop I might also add) to see that we didn't use the turn signal. He was definitely following us the moment he saw our car was from Colorado. License plate profiling if you ask me. Why would he be interested in a Colorado license plate? Well, Colorado recently made is legal to possess small amounts of weed, and it's been reported that neighboring states have been pulling over Colorado vehicles at increasing rates as a result. In the end, the officer took John's driver's license and our car registration information, probably ran our plates and checked us out in his database, and then came back to tell us he was going to let us off with just a warning. Not even a paper warning though either (which to me made it that much more of a bogus stop, because typically even when you get a warning you'll still be given a paper citation that just states it's a warning). Anyway, it just added an extra 15 minutes or so to our long day. While it was a great visit to see our friends and family (one that went by way too quickly too!), it was sure nice to be home!
Enjoying the freedom from their carseats while they can!
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