What have we been up to????

Well, my dear readers, again I am slacking off on blogging.  Bad me.  Unfortunately, what I am about to write about might be boring and dull, but it is what we've been up to.  So I should be the bored one!  (Also, I am in a strange writing mood today, which means I will probably be typing whatever I'm thinking.)  Here goes...

Hm…(where were we when I last wrote anyway?!) oh yes.  Little Rock, Arkansas was where we were staying.  Well, I can't say that it was that incredible, although it was a clean, safe-feeling city.  We drove into it last Thursday, and it was very cold and windy.  At 10:00 a.m. we visited the famous Peabody Hotel, and watched 'the duck show'.  You ask, what is the duck show?!  I will tell you...it is a hotel (duh) and has a nice indoor fountain with several mallards swimming around in it (live ones).  They have been swimming in the fountain for decades (generations of them, of course), after a couple of drunken duck hunters let some live decoy ducks loose in the pond.  The owner of the hotel loved it, and asked if they could be trained.  So, every day since then, a small flock of ducks has been escorted down the glass elevator, down a red carpet, up the red carpet stairs and into the fountain.  They swim around all day until 5:00 p.m., when they are escorted back down, back up the elevator and into their private apartment.  It really is quite cute; I got a lot of pictures. :) 

SO...after we did that, we visited both the old and the new state capitol buildings.  I liked the new one better, but it was too cold and marble-y and echo-y for my taste.  They did have an interesting record of pictures going all the way back several decades, of the House and Senate members.  For instance, all the members of the House of Reps. who served for each term had their pictures in a large frame.  Every four years, a new huge frame is added.  We even found Jib Bob Duggar's picture in the 1999-2002 frame!  We almost went up to visit the Duggar’s, but the timing was just not good this time, and we couldn’t have given them enough notice if we came by. 

Well, that was Thursday.  On Friday, we left the campground in Little Rock at noon and drove about 5 hours to Oklahoma City.  We stayed in a Wal-Mart parking lot (and did a lot of Wal-Mart shopping for giggles) and even used our generator so we could use the heater.  The next day, we had breakfast at the Waffle House (they have yummy breakfast wraps), did a little more shopping at Wal-Mart and then drove several more hours to Amarillo, Texas (and don't you start singing that song, Dad has been singing it all the time!).  We finally found the last item on our scavenger hunt list (a hitchhiker, can you believe it?!).  So we FINALLY got to open the prize!!!  Much to our delight, it was a Lamplighter audio book, "The Boy of Mount Rhigi".  We listened to it right away, and we loved it!!  I would like to buy the book now, and I highly recommend the audio!  Thank you so much Becker family! 

Amarillo gave us another Wal-Mart to stay at.  It was very, very, very windy though, and ccoolldd...but we used the generator again and we were comfortable.  We all woke up early (for us, anyway), since daylight saving's time ended.  That was good though, because we gained a whole hour of traveling time.  We began driving at 9:00, and when we got into New Mexico, we entered Mountain Time!  So we gained another hour!!!  I felt so efficient, even though I wasn't driving...I felt like an efficient passenger.  We drove a little over 7 hours to Gallup, New Mexico, which is 23 miles from the border to Arizona.  Dad figured out that we are only a 12 hour drive from home!!!!!!  But, I've had enough driving for now, and I certainly don't feel like going another 12 hours. 

You might want to know how we pass the time in the car?  Oh, you don't?  Well, I will tell you anyway, to amuse myself.  Well, we listened to a Voddie Baucham sermon as a family (which took over an hour), Mom slept when she wasn't driving (or she looked like it), Dad drove or worked, and the girls did all sorts of stuff (like coloring, listening to Jonathan Park, making messes, bickering, laughing, playing Tetris, etc.).  As for me, I have ear buds in my ears about 99% of the time.  Either I was listening to "The Boy of Mount Rhigi", playing music on my iPod or something like that.  Then I might play Tetris on the ancient (but still working) Game Boy.  For those who don't know what Tetris is (probably those of my generation), it is hard to explain so please look it up on Google or something.  But it is really fun, so if you ever want to play, please speak with me.  Anyway, I also look out the window, talk with my sisters (and occasionally bicker), do sign language and daydream excessively.  But I get very bored.  Thank goodness this driving season won't last forever...

Well, I hope y'all kept up with me and put up with my 'chatter'.  I just have those days...:)  Hopefully I'll post again before we get home, with some final thoughts and such...