Amarillo, Texas

 We drove a lot of our trip on Historic Route 66, which the boys thought was great.  Josh had downloaded the movie Cars onto their iPads and they watch it as we drove it.  Pretty great.  Amarillo, Texas was awesome.  First time the boys had been to Texas (Josh and I lived in Texas for a summer when we were expecting Palmer).  We could't pass up taking a picture of this huge cowboy and some cadillacs.

 When I found out about this art piece where the kids could spray paint old Cadillac cars that had been stuck into the dirt during the 60's...there is no way I was going to pass that up.  We woke up and headed to the store and each of the boys picked out a color of spray paint.  Palmer picked florescent pink, Lincoln red, Hunter florescent yellow and McKay picked gold.

 It was cold, muddy and a little rainy, but the boys had so much fun!  These cars were more paint than metal after decades of being painted.

 That gold ended up being the color that was most visible.

 I have a feeling that any of the boys' art wasn't going to stay there that long...

 This was such a unique experience, I love stuff like this!!  We had a great time.

The Purple Cow-Little Rock, Arkansas

 I was so disappointed that our schedule didn't allow for us to spend more time in Little Rock, Arkansas.  I really wanted to go to the Clinton Presidential museum.  I think I want to go to as many of those as I can. I think they are fascinating.  We have the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library in Atlanta and I really enjoyed seeing that.  

Anyway...we didn't get to Little Rock until evening and then we just found somewhere fun to eat.  All the reviews told us to go to The Purple Cow.  We squeezed in about 15 minuets before it closed and they were still so nice to us and gave us great service.  I felt bad for keeping the servers and cooks there longer, but it was such yummy food.

 It was a diner with a 50's vibe.  It was also fun to see the cutout of President Clinton on the back wall with his saxophone.  

 For dessert we were going to split two of the Purple Cow shakes and they divided them up for us.  So nice!

 We couldn't leave without getting pictures of the purple Christmas decorations!

Even though it was a quick stop in Little Rock, it was fun to experience a little bit of Arkansas!

National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum

 So I have to be honest, when I looked into this museum I thought it was going to be sort of dorky and funny.  We got a huge laugh telling people we were going to visit.  Funny enough, we loved it and I think it was one of everyone's favorite things we did on the trip!  This huge sculpture was pretty impressive!

 There were a bunch of "good ole boys" volunteering to help us find everything.

 I didn't take many pictures of the art but there was so many beautiful paintings as well as leather work, silver works and beads.  It was so impressive.

 Map of where all of the Native American tribes used to be located.

 This section of the museum was dedicated to western movies.  This box the boys are standing in front of did a trivia game that the boys played over and over.  I think we have seen 2 westerns ever and they kept trying to win.  I think we need to go and see a few more!

 Western movie wing (the boys were still playing the trivia game...)

 We love rodeos and have seen our fair share so this wing of the museum was super interesting to us.  There were sections for all of the different parts of rodeoing and some had videos of the greats doing their thing.  This one was the bucking bronco section.

 This was the section where they watch bull riding and much to my dismay, all of the sudden there was a segment on cowboys that got gored by bulls. I left pretty quick as that is something I couldn't handle, but in my haste to get out of there...I left my three oldest to watch the goring.  What was I thinking!! Definite mom fail...and they were semi-traumatized by watching some guy get gored in the face.

 Re-enacting how they would cheer for a rodeo.

 Saddles...

 You would be amazed how fascinating barbed wire can be.

 This was the favorite place in the museum.  A replica of an old west town.  There wasn't anybody there, probably because it was so close to Christmas, and my boys had a ball running all over it.

We couldn't believe how massive the whole thing was and completely inside this museum (the museum was huge!)

 Once again, everything was all decked out for Christmas.  We always need to do our sight seeing around Christmas!

 The Saloon.

 Jail...I was tempted to leave them there!

 I think they loved the church building the most.  They would leave and then come back to it and then leave and come back to it.  

 Bank

 School house

 The town even ad a huge wind mill!

Stables. 

This was the perfect place to get all of their wiggles out for the next leg of our trip.  I am so glad that we stopped so much along the way.

Braum's-Oklahoma City

 When we told people that we were going through Oklahoma City to get to Utah for Christmas, everyone said to go to Braums for ice cream.  If there is ice cream, we definitely will be there!  

 We were also so excited to get a break from the car by this time!  These two got rootbeer floats and thought they were delicious.

 So many flavors!

 Chocolate ice cream.  Always.  

 I was so worried about being on my own with the boys, but we actually had a great time!

It was such a fun adventure seeing all the new things we saw on this trip!