The Family Staycation

The new interwebs buzzword is “staycation”. Due to the economy, it’s not just for poor white trash anymore, it’s for EVERYONE. Including The Phreddy.

We had a super fantabulous spring break family vacation planned. It had something for EVERYONE. With the help of the Food Network’s planning guide, I had mapped out a “Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives” tour of Texas/Oklahoma. We were going to spend the week staying in ultra-hip retro Tee-Pee Motels and eat our way across America’s homophobic “heartland”. We were going to see family and friends. We were going to have quality family time. We were going to travel parts of Oklahoma and Texas’ Route 66. It was to be the bomb-diggityest-bomb-bomb family vacation E.V.E.R.

BUT…

Due to reasons I can’t exactly get into on my blog JUST YET, we had to scrap “the plan”. We decided we would just stay put in our casa with the boys, since we had already taken the time off of work, and have 9-days of quality family time.

BUT…

After the first day, it became quite clear that the boys were NOT going to stay put for NINE WHOLE DAYS. We HAD to come up with a NEW plan.

Fortunately for us, spring break coincided with a TON of stuff going on in Central Texas at the same time. We decided to take a day trip to Houston on Tuesday to go to the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo. (NOTE: For those living OUTSIDE of Texas those words are pronounced HUE-STUN and ROW-DEE-OHHHHHH respectively. If we meant for y’all to say “HOUSE-TON” and “ROW-DAY-OHHHH”, we woulda asked ya to!) Anyway…

The FP’s mom and bro met us at the livestock show and rodeo, and it was an absolute blast. We had such a good time looking at the animules, and eating the fair fare and riding the rides. It was a tad bit exhausting driving 6 hours (3 there, 3 back) and spending, roughly, 5 hours at the show…but the boys had so much fun that it was ENTIRELY worth it.

The next morning we left for Oklahoma City for a visit with my family and a MUCH needed hair cut. Yeah, yeah…they have places here to get yer hairs done, but I only trust one person with my wig, so we have to go to OKC to git ‘er done. The first night we were there we caught up with my folks and my sister’s fam at a decent “Mexican” restaurant in Norman, Oklahoma. Living in Northern Mexico, it cracks me up to see what other people consider “Mexican food”!

Whilst in OKC I had high hopes of hitting at least one of the “Dives” from the food network, Leo’s BBQ. It didn’t work out for us though. APPARENTLY someone in Leo’s family died earlier in the week and the funeral was on the ONLY day we were able to go and the entire Leo’s BBQ family shut down both of its locations. My folks took us to this place in HELLAFAR north OKC (Arcadia, Oklahoma), which JUST SO HAPPENED to be on Route 66 called Pops. To tell you how amazing this place was, all I have to do is tell you that FOR LUNCH on a Thursday afternoon at 11 there was a TWO HOUR wait for a table (inside) and a 45 minute wait for a table outside (in the 50 degree weather!). Normally I’d spit in the hostesses mouth after she told me a 2 hour wait, but I showed a little restraint and told her we’d take a table outside. I had noticed they had a HUGE play yard in back of the restaurant and figured I could EASILY entertain the kids for 45 minutes. NOT TO MENTION, Pops had FIVE-HUNDRED different bottled sodas to look at in their coolers. We spent the better part of 20 minutes looking at all the options and then found out you could mix-n-match your sodas and create your own six packs. So Adrian went through the coolers picking out all kinds of sodas (by color, not flavor, of course!). After getting our table, I experienced one of the best double grilled onion cheeseburgers, fries, and LEMONADE I’d ever had in muh life. OMG, was that burger tasty! After lunch we took a quick drive down a little further on Route 66 and toured a historic “round barn”. It was surely enough to get me my Route 66 fix that I had originally planned on.

Later Thursday evening we met up with a bunch of our “family” (made-up family and bio family) at Ann’s Chicken Fry, coincidentally ALSO on Route 66! As the name suggests, Ann’s was not “healthy eats”, but HOT DAMN was that chicken fried steak, fried okra, and mashed potatoes T.A.S.T.Y! My only complaint about Ann’s was they didn’t have a space big enough to accommodate ALL of our “family”, so we had to split our group up into two…and I didn’t get to visit with as many folks as I wanted. And what did the boys think about Ann’s??? Adrian is STILL talking about his dinner that came out in a car! (Kid’s meals are served in a paper car!)

After saying goodbye to our created family, we said goodbye to our folks and left to head back to Austin LATE Thursday night. With EVERYONE in the car, except yours truly, falling asleep before hitting the highway, it was a VERY quiet ride home.

Friday we had a fairly lazy day around the house recovering from all the drive-time. But Saturday we managed to pack up a picnic and head downtown to Auditorium shores to catch some of the bands performing for SXSW music fest.

Ya know. I had a TRULY fantastic vacation with my family, even though we didn’t get to follow through with our initial plans. BUT…I can FINALLY answer Joe’s question. I DO NOT EVER want to be a stay-at-home dad! GOOD LORD! I needed to come back to work to recover from my staycation!