I'm really good at drawing moray eels.

So.  The beeeeg road trip to Idaho Falls.

It started out...not so stellar.  But let's be honest - the "road" part of "road trip" is only fun if there are no kids involved.  Especially kids who have to go pee every half an hour. (I really think I need to get Micah checked for diabetes...)  We had to get two new tires before we left town - our two front tires were baaaaaald.  I seriously love that phrase.  One's tires being bald.  It's very figurative.

But the tires didn't come in time, so the day we were supposed to leave, we were still waiting for them.  I finally get a thing on my phone that they had arrived at Discount Tire, so I head over there, and I find out that they got delivered to Discount Tire in some small town in the southwest of Oregon.  Sighhhh.  So we had to do this thing where we sold our two good tires to the store, and then they put on four new tires of a different kind.  This whole snafu took several hours.  So we didn't head out until like 2:30.

I was really hoping to just punch out the whole drive, which would have gotten us to I.F. at like one in the morning, but if there's one thing that my parents worry the very, very most about, it's their daughters driving at night.  They begged me to stop about halfway, in Boise, for the night.  They paid for a hotel for my kids and me.  (Thank you so much, Parental Units!)

Oh!  I forgot to tell you that Ben couldn't come on this trip.  We want to visit his mom and stepdad in August, plus we went on our trip to Hawaii in May, so he doesn't have any extra vacation time.

The kids and I were so tired that we collapsed into bed soon upon arrival, but we did take the time to swim in the pool the next morning, before checkout:

Gage has ZERO fear of the water.  He loves holding his breath and putting his head under water. He's amazing!  At my class reunion later that week, people would ask me to show them pictures of my kids from my phone, and these were the only ones I had!  Haha!  I try to take them off the phone and put them onto my hard drive as often as I can.

So then we headed the rest of the way to Idaho Falls that day.  We spent that afternoon and then the next morning with my darling friend, Megs.  And I was an idiot and forgot to take pictures.  We had a blast with you, Meggie!!

By this time, all my sisters except Lex were in town, and we thought it would be a great idea to greet her at the airport.  At one point, we thought of making a big sign that said, "Welcome Home, Sister S!!" but never really put it into action.  When we got to the airport, we had a few minutes, and my resourceful sister, Beads, procured a drink box from the snack store and a sharpie.  It was perfect for our sign, but there was this big, wordy blurb in the middle of the box.  Beads suggested that I draw a horse on the blurb, since Lex works at a place that does hippotherapy, and she is a huge horse fan. Um, I did a really bad job:

It looks like a moray eel with an ear and hair.  My heck.  Can you believe I took art in high school? You would never, ever know.  Oh, and the bubble coming out of the moray eel's mouth says, "LYLAS, you SS!"  LYLAS stands for "Love Ya Like a Sister!"  (From the days of yore, when kids passed actual written notes in class instead of texting each other.  That's how we often signed off.  "LYLAS!!")  The "SS" part has origins from college with my friend, Nitz.  We used to call each other Silly Sluts.  I know it's naughty. And it's completely untrue.  We were really good girls.  We would kind of lisp the s parts.  We thought (still think?) it was hilarious.  My sisters caught on to it, and then we shortened it to "S.S."  Because I'm the Initials Queen.  The IQ.

Lex loved the sign.  And the crazy, cheering people (a.k.a. my family) who greeted her when she got off the plane.

Mom offered to take my ninos home while the Sisters Four went to Babe's Bakery for lunch.  Best. food. everrrrr!! (Thanks, Mom!)

Funny story about Babe's Bakery.  When Lex was in college, she brought a boyfriend to IF for a visit, and they made the absolutely required pilgrammage to Babe's.  Babe's is really funny, because the waitresses are....a little bit brusque.  The one is okay, but the other...  she kind of throws the menus at you and tromps off.  And most of the women who work there are a little bit older - maybe retirement age?  Maybe a little bit younger?  As Lex's boyfriend looked around, he said, "Well, I can see why they call this place 'Babe's.'"  Hahaha!

I got a Monte Cristo sandwich - my usual.  It was awesome - as usual.

When we were leaving, we saw this license plate - one of Beads' many nicknames is BJ, because her middle name starts with a J:

That license plate reminds me of a song on my favorite Doris Day movie, Pillow Talk.  The song is called Yaya Roly Poly.  Whenever I see the above picture, I start singing, "Yaya BJ, BJ, yaya BJ, BJ..."

We also noticed that Nat matched both Lex and me.  Her shirt has the same color of stripes as Lex's sweater, and she and I were wearing the same exact capris:

Sam's Club specials, baby.

Can you believe how long Lexi's hair is getting?  And how dorky mine looks?  Haha!  I need to try the cool Ellen DeGeneres fauxhawk or something.