Family Vacation Part 1
Part 1 of a 3 part series.
This past week my family and I went camping in Arkansas. The Arkansas State Parks System has four parks where you can rent an in-place RV. We decided to stay at Cane Creek State Park. It proved to be a great time for our whole family.
A couple strong influences in our lives had both recommended always making sure to take a family vacation when you have the chance. We saw this time as being the perfect opportunity to get away and do a family vacation. We love camping and camping tends to be a little more cost effective than other vacations so we jumped on the chance and off we went.
We left Dallas on Sunday after church and drove for about 7ish hours. Emily had Stacy's laptop in the backseat with headphones on and we had the opportunity to sit in the front listening to our own music and talk the whole way. WOW!!!! That part was really nice. In the past Emily has had a laptop to watch movies, but never headphones so we ended up all listening to whatever she was watching.
Stacy and I thought about the various roadtrips we had been on as kids and how we obviously never had DVDs to keep us occupied, but that somehow we still had fun on trips. The one big difference that occured to us between then and now is car seats. When we were kids we had the freedom to roam all over the car. Now our kids are straped down in one place for the entire trip. I'm not complaining about carseats, I wouldn't trade them for anything, but just the observation that there is a difference. So in light of that difference we decided that having a DVD playing while on long trips was an acceptable concession.
So back to the the trip.
The RV was actually a 30ft travel trailer that had four bunk beds, a sleeper sofa and a bedroom with a queen size bed. It was stocked with pots, pans, dishes, utensils, cleaning supplies, stove, oven, refridgerator and freezer. I really do think it had everything we needed except for food and linens. Outside there was a nice wooden deck with a propane gas grill. I wish I had know ahead of time that the grill was gas as I would have brought a tank from home. This was a great trial run for us, because we have been thinking about getting a travel trailer eventually for family vacations.
We got there around 9 or so at night and got all of our stuff inside. We unloaded the cold stuff into the fridge and freezer and then got Emily set up in her room. She did great. When we went into the back room with the four bunk beds she just loved it. We had her pick the bed she wanted to sleep on and then put all of her toys on the other bottom bunk. She really adjusted quickly and had a great time.
Throughout the week we got to go hiking, play games, play in the dirt, cook out, read and enjoy family time. To our surprise (wonderful surprise) when we got there our cell phones had no signal. 
We were so happy to not have phone, internet, tv, nothing!!! We occasionally asked Emily what she liked best during the week and every time she answered, "Spending time with mommy and daddy." Boy will that melt your heart.
I think that will do it for this post, but wait until next time when we hear about, "what was that noise? and why is it beeping every 1/2 hour?"