Fall Break Mega Road Trip - Part 4

Today's stop was Magnolia in Waco.  We had watched Chip & Joanne Gains and Fixer Upper for years.  This was the stop that was making all of my friends jealous.  The fact that it was wet and cold put a bit of a damper on the experience.  We also got there right before the fall festival was to begin, so things were still being set up for that.  Just as well, it was set to get a lot more crowded soon.  It was fun to look at, but I'm not really a shopper so we didn't spend a ton of time here.  Just enough to say we had seen it.

We found other interesting shops in Waco and spent a little time geocaching and then headed toward Houston.  Besides this type of silliness is more our speed anyway

On the way to Houston, I may a detour that I had been keeping secret.  Just a few miles away I pulled off the road onto a driveway and announced that we were at Chuck Norris' ranch.  There were some workers painting the fencing and when we stopped they proceeded to wave us on in.  I got out and quickly explained we just wanted to take a quick photo.  In hindsight maybe we should have just kept on going up the driveway.  We could always plead ignorance and say we were waved in!  But we settled for a fun photo opt for the Chuck Norris uber-fan!

We also scored some bottles of C Force water, spring water bottled on the ranch.  We're waiting to see if it unleashes any massive boot-kicking abilities in Dusty! 

Fall Break Mega Road Trip - Part 3

Oklahoma City - Waco

After our time exploring all things Pioneer Woman we pointed to car toward Oklahoma City.  Our first stop was at the Oklahoma City Memorial.

This stop also served as a sober history lesson for Rachel since these events took place almost a decade before she was born.

Then we turned from the solemn to the ridiculous.  We headed toward a house in Oklahoma City that was the site of an elaborate geocache.  The owners had converted a shed into an elaborate puzzle.  It felt a little creepy going down the alley to the back entrance and using a combination provided in the cache description to unlock the gate.  It didn't help matters when the neighbor's dog began barking viciously on the other side of the metal wall.  Rachel was ready to call it quits, but we pressed on.  Once we finally got into the building we had to figure out how to access the cache.  It was hidden in the base of this creepy looking chair.

 After quite a while we managed to figure it out.  I'm sure if the owners were watching on camera they were getting quite a laugh out of our antics.

The next day we headed toward Dallas to the George W. Bush Presidential Library.  An interesting stop that included a full size replica of the Oval office  

Beams from the World Trade Center

As well as a lot of other interesting memorabilia

We ended the day in Waco and Rachel discovered the joy that is In-&-Out Burger!

Fall Break Mega Road Trip - Part 2

Rolling into Oklahoma we were headed toward Pawhuska, but again found ourselves detoured out into the middle of nowhere to find a few caches.  This side adventure was to find a cache titled "August 13th".  I mean, after all, you can't pass up your birthday cache.  August 13 happened to be in a cedar tree down a lonely road out in the middle of the Oklahoma prairie.  It was gorgeous!

I wasn't kidding about being in the middle of nowhere.

Just a short distance away was August 11.  Here's Dusty with his birthday cache. 

We headed on into Pawhuska home of the Pioneer Woman Mercantile.  Both Rachel and I enjoy watching the Pioneer Woman cooking show so this was going to be a fun stop.

It was fun to look around and there was a bakery on the 2nd floor.  It's too bad we have to deal with this gluten-free issue.  The treats had to be a no-go.  We lucked out because we were there when they were offering free tours of the lodge on the ranch where the shows are filmed.  Since I'm not much of a shopper this was the more appealing option.  We left Pawhuska and headed about 10 miles out into the ranch land and wove our way down miles of gravel road to the lodge.  It was a lot of fun to be able to walk through where the cooking show is filmed.

This gentleman talked about what is involved in filming and since Rachel was the only kid around he went out of his way to show her what was in the drawers and in the kitchen.

At the back of the lodge was a commercial kitchen that is also used to prepare the recipes.  This was one of the storage areas.  Racks and racks of dishes and cookware

The highlight for Rachel was meeting Henry one of the ranch dogs.

We crossed paths with Route 66 again and it gave us a few more interesting sights for geocaching. 

Fall Break Mega Road Trip - Part 1

Planned for our fall break this year was a massive week-long road trip looping down through Oklahoma and Texas.  Included in the plans were some sightseeing, family time, and geocaching.  So we pointed the car west but hit our first stop just a few hours down the road.  Can't drive through Illinois without seeing the family.  Up first was to cheer on Carson at a soccer match. (A COLD one at that)

Rachel got her puppy snuggles in with Milo

Also on the agenda was a Flora staple...a few rounds of bowling. 

Dusty's dad had requested that we all sing together at church the next time we were in town.  So all of us sang a special together adults and kids.  First the kids did a song together.  Not sure what caused these giggles.

After a fun weekend with family, we headed off toward Missouri.  We made time to snag a few interesting geocaches such as this one along Route 66

Geocaching always seems to bring us to some fun off-the-path sites.  This was at the intersection of Missouri, Kansas, and Oklahoma.  

 We took a 15-mile detour to cut through a corner of Kansas to this random cemetery in Kansas.  Mainly to log a geocache in Kansas.

Next up...our Oklahoma adventures.

21!

Happy 21st Birthday Aaron!

Birthday dinner at Portillo's

Aaron found this maze of crepe paper waiting for him when he woke up...courtesy of his sister

And since 1/2 of us are gluten-free and Aaron doesn't really like a lot of sweets...a personal sized cake to celebrate!

Happy Birthday Aaron...we love you!

September highlights

A few September highlights...

Dusty and I have lived in Brownsburg for 16 years, but this was our first football game.  We walked down to the high school for the homecoming game, but not before a quick trip to Wal-mart for a purple Bulldogs shirt.  We both decided that it was quite a different experience from Flora's Dancy Field.  A packed house and a win to boot!

I also got to congratulate my pal Alli on her latest medal haul from special Olympics!

We also planned a day centered around our geocaching hobby.  We participated in the Leaf Olympics.  It was a geocaching event hosted by a family near the Indiana-Ohio border.  We spent the morning hunting down and logging caches placed by this family, then headed to their home for a celebration picnic.  They also had an elaborate multi-cache placed on their land.  The last stage was this large container full of travel bugs.

Dusty figuring out how to get the cache at the bottom of this pipe

Our host's collection of pathtags!  These were some serious geocachers!

And now the rest of August

Time to jump back into things.  Rachel's first day of 8th grade.

A photo to document August 7th.  Daniel had heart surgery to replace a valve.  A long day, but the surgery was a success.  He was blessed that the problem was detected and that it was able to be repaired.

August also brings the church block party and time with my band peeps!

And warm summer nights for a downtown date