Last weekend we did the drive to NYC to see my younger brother and his wife. It was such a fun day of seeing the sights! The only thing missing was my parents who know the city like the back of their hand and my older brother and his family! In the future we might have to do it again with the whole gang.  New York City at Christmas is so magical.

We didn’t tell the boys where we were going or that we would see Tina and Graham. We got them into the car super early and drove. As we drove in we pointed out the Statue of Liberty. (Jackson has had a fascination with it for yrs) He was so excited when he spotted it. I asked him where we were on our adventure and he squealed excitedly “France!!!) Last he had heard we had seen the one in Paris so he was so confused. He was so excited to find out we were in NYC.

NYC is a crazy city to do with kids in many ways but the people watching alone kept them entertained most of the day. The city was having their Santa bar hop while we were in town from 10 AM on so we saw hundreds of people dressed like Santa and elves, festive costumes, etc…Jackson spotted this gingerbread man as we began the day. A city filled with people in costume was kind of a kids dream.

FAO Schwartz was a highlight of the day! FYI if you have a stroller you can skip the line and head in the back door! I remember going as a child so it was fun to take the boys. Owen slept through lots of it but Jackson enjoyed it so much! We were all kind of amazed by the giant candy section.

I tried to talk the boys into adopting a baby at the pretend baby nursery

After a quick lunch we stopped by my cousins new bar in Brooklyn. It’s called Exley if any of you are ever in Brooklyn you should check them out!  They have done a great job with the space that used to be an old garage. The boys enjoyed ginger ale so no worries!

we left Brooklyn and headed to Central Park where the boys ran and played and we watched a street performer doing bubbles and then there was a big bird spotting.

we finished the day with a walk through Times Square (rather a push and shove through, it was packed! ). I’ll spare you the naked cowboy pics since this is family friendly. Once we survived Times Square we grabbed dinner and exchanged Christmas gifts. We got dessert at a little bakery called Amy’s Bread. I highly recommend it!   Not one thing didn’t look yummy!

We said our goodbyes and loaded up the kids to head back. We stopped over near Philly for the night and met friends for lunch in Wilmington on our way back. It was a whirlwind trip but so fun.

So any of you that know Seth and I well know that we aren’t very spontaneous. Although now that I am writing that and analyzing the 5 moves in 7 yrs of marriage I realize we might have put on a good front. Anyhow, we aren’t naturally spontaneous. We over think most things. And I talk myself out of lots of adventurous things.

But then there are the crazy drives we do…

Seth and I started dating in November of 2004. Soon after we started dating I went home to Houston for a month to work and he stayed in Dallas to work. We were so bummed that we had just started dating and now wouldn’t really see each other much. About 2 weeks into it I decided it would be a good time to go back to my apartment and “check my mail”. I had to work on that Friday until early afternoon so I decided that I could leave after work and make it to Dallas by dinner time to go out with Seth. The only catch was that I had to be back Sat morning for my mom’s church Christmas tea. Which was at 10 AM. Yikes. So I drove up to see Seth, we went for dinner and then drove around Highland Park looking at Christmas lights and then I went home, got a few hours of sleep and had to leave at like 4 AM in order to get back to the tea. Crazy, huh? But somehow it was adventurous and so worth it to see Seth! 10 hours of driving and all.

Then there are the drives we have done when we know a friend or family are here or there, not exactly on our home leave travel route but worth the detour!  We’ve been known to take rest breaks around meeting new babies and celebrating birthdays.  We added a couple days of layover on our way back to Switzerland last year because we just couldn’t be in the US and not meet our nephew James!  And a trip to Austin to hold my bestie’s new Annabelle! And quite a few more stops in between. If there are enough hours to make it work we try to, even if it feels a bit crazy for us not so spontaneous people. A couple of weeks ago I drove to Wilmington, DE for lunch with a friend. I told a friend I was doing it and she couldn’t understand why it was worth it to drive there, visit a few hours and turn right back around. It was so worth the time with her catching up face to face and seeing her life in action. It just isn’t the same over the phone.

This weekend we are doing another crazy Kolb drive! We got the itch this Fall to go to NYC and long story short we thought we could stay with a friend and make a weekend of it.  Our lodging didn’t work out but my brother and his wife were able to get a hotel and we couldn’t cancel the opportunity to see them in person in our neck of the woods (ie not exactly our woods but in our corner of the country). So, we decided to make a big day of it. Saturday morning we will load this kids up around 4 AM and make the trek. We will spend the day with them and then we will drive to a hotel outside of the city to crash for the night before making the drive back Sunday morning! But on the way back we will detour through Wilmington again, just because we can’t fathom passing our friends along the highway and not seeing them, even if just for a bit.

These kind of posts always get people commenting on how all of our moves and travel must make our kids easier to travel with. And I always feel the need to keep it real and let you know that they can be really tough travelers! They are 5 and 3 and human children after all.  The boys don’t know we are going and they don’t know that magical NYC will await them, or that they will see their Aunt and Uncle!

Call us crazy. We’ll be wiped out. But it will be worth it.

And there are no more crazy drives on the horizon…but we’ve had the itch to meet our niece Madeleine since she was born nearly a yr ago. Oregon is more than a brave road trip so that will be less spontaneous!

Since we will be stateside for a bit this was a treat to do one last homeleave before the next phase.  Seth spent most of his leave painting and working on the house but he snuck in a few fun days before that all began. You can click on the pictures to make them bigger. I haven’t learned how to do a collage and the thumbnails cut off some of the pictures but this was WAY too many pictures to put in full size and in a zillion posts. Sorry for the photo dump!

We started in Friendswood with Seth’s family! We made it to an Astros game which made Seth’s heart content. Oh yes, and he had some Whataburger too. What more could a guy ask for.

on our way to Ft Worth we popped in and saw our friends Bo and Leigh and their little girls! Their new home is so beautiful and was such a welcoming space!

Seth stayed in Ft Worth for a couple of days with us and then packed up and drove a penske up with his dad to get going on painting and getting the house liveable!  While he was away we went to the Ft Worth zoo, got spoiled with my moms good cooking, went to Glenrose, Texas to look for dinosaur tracks in the river at the State park, spent time with my brother and my sister-in-law Tina and weathered the heat of the Texas summer!   We also got to catch up with good friends from our old Dallas days!

part way through our time in Ft Worth we went away to my sister-in-law Tina’s family lake house in Possum Kingdon! On the wall of their kitchen they have a quote that summed up the weekend: “Home is where you treat friends like family and your family like friends”.

After our time in Ft Worth the boys and I headed back to Friendswood where we spent a few more days with Seth’s mom and had some great cousin time. It happened to be Jackson’s birthday so we celebrated there. I had planned to keep it REALLY simple and it was but Jackson started asking about invitations and friends and DADDY so by the end of the day our fun frozen yogurt outings with cousin morphed into a pizza/swimming party to lessen the blow of a birthday during a move.

These weeks were packed and exhausting but so fun too. I learned pretty fast that I don’t enjoy being a single mom and that it was very hard to be away while Seth was working on the house. I am so happy to be here now working together and making progress towards being settled!!

So it turns out that when everyone in the US found out we were coming back they decorated with American flags, shot off fireworks and fired up the grills for good old American hamburgers….not really, it was actually the 4th of July, but it may as well have been for us because it was so fun to come back just before the 4th and soak in lots of patriotic love!

We stayed for our first few days stateside with my brother and his family. My sister-in-law and brother kindly braved a day with our boys so that we could spend a day finalizing our kitchen remodel and picking paint and appliances for the house. (I don’t recommend doing this with jetlag but it’s just how it worked out)  The next day was the 4th and we spent the day playing with the kids, going to a 4th of July parade that my niece Ruthie was marching in, grilling and going to the pool. At the end of the night we let the kids try some sparklers. Stephanie did a great job of decorating the table and adding little festive touches!

The boys did well with jetlag all in all. We wrapped up a few more house details and flew out Thursday morning for Texas.