Wickenburg

One perk of having our new car is the ability to reinstate our regular road trips! Its been quite awhile since we took off for a trip just for fun. So, last week, as soon as I got home from work, we all piled in our little Jetta and headed north to Wickenburg. Wickenburg is a rather large small town, meaning that it feels small but isn't. :) Lowell and I would love to eventually relocate there but the recession has not really affected home prices enough for them to fit into our budget yet. So, we're still looking in Tonopah and we're excited that Wickenburg is only 45 minutes away. The drive there was relatively uneventful. We played I-spy, age appropriate trivia (Nathan was asked about the War of 1812 because he has to study it for class, Jillian was asked to spell 3 letter words, and Chloe got a hodge-podge of questions relating to math, geography and spelling.) and we watched the scenery. However, as we neared Wickenburg, Jillian decided it was time for a new game and began to mimic everything that Lowell said, in the same way he said it. Oooo she thought this was great fun! And Lowell did such a good job being patient with her! :) He laughed and the kids laughed and I laughed... And she was very proud of herself. Thankfully, this hasn't become a habit because it would stop being funny real fast!
When we got to Denny's, we got seated and the kids started coloring on their menus. They started talking about what they wanted to eat, and all three sucessfully completed the word search. When the food came, all three kids got grapes with their meal. Lowell ordered a hamburger that came with a toothpick to hold it together. Nathan immediately requested the toothpick and began stabbing his grapes. Naturally, now Chloe wanted a toothpick, so Daddy broke it in half for them to both have one. Chloe started lining her grapes up, a la kabob and Nathan was still stabbing at his food. Of course, now the baby wants a toothpick. When I tell her that there isn't another one, she handles it very well and decides to get creative. In her bowl of grapes is a small grape stem. Its enough of a toothpick for her! So, she begins the rather difficult task of creating a grape kabob on the rather flexible grape stem. She's very proud of herself when she succeeds! :)
The drive home is much more eventful because Lowell decides that he doesn't want to take the same route that got us there. There is a large mountain directly between Wickenburg and Buckeye so the only alternatives for main roads are to go southeast or southwest. Well, Lowell didn't like these options and so he set off in the relative direction chosing roads at random so long as they headed in the right direction. Unfortunately, about 15 miles in, we came to a sign that said, "Welcome to Toyota". No kidding. Now if there had been a town named Toyota, it wouldn't have been so bad. This Toyota, unfortunately, was a proving ground for the car manufacturer and was also the end of the road. A complete dead end. We had no option other than to turn around and go all the way back to the highway and come home the way we came... At this point, I went to sleep. :) When we got home, Lowell got onto the internet and discovered that, indeed, there was a road to get us home and we had seen it... But I had suggested that it probably didn't go anywhere because there was no line in the middle of it.. Well, that'll teach him to listen to me! :)