Dare I say it…the Murphy clan is officially coming out of the fog that we have lived in since having Bennett. We are beginning to feel brave again. We are beginning to feel ready for adventure. We are beginning to leave the house with only two or three bags of supplies at a time.
Yep, having 3 walkers really does make a huge difference with what I’m willing to partake in on the weekends.
This weekend’s weather bordered on perfection…windy yes, a little chilly yes, but just sunshine in every ounce of the sky. It was just too pretty not to get outside and enjoy it.
I’m not going to lie, I think one of the reasons this weekend was so great was that I got to spend Friday night out in FW with my bestie Mary Kathryn and then do the 10K of the Cowtown with her on Saturday morning. It was like I got to have a little piece of my weekend for exactly what I wanted to do and that really did make it so much easier to head home at lunchtime on Saturday and feel ready to take on the rest of the weekend with the family. Don’t let anyone fool you, hanging out with 3 kids 5 and under is an endurance sport! Physically and mentally…makes running look easy!
We headed out and first hit up Sam’s for our bi-monthly shopping trip and pizza in the “cafe”. Yes, the 1.50 pizza combos are the best deal in town. After spending an hour and a half at Sam’s, we had a brief thought of hitting up the Dallas Zoo (thanks Sarah for the inspiration), but realized that it closed at 4 and knew that was way too much effort for way too little reward.
So instead we headed to a treasure that Sean and I had discovered the weekend before when we participated in our Scavenger Dash (an amazing race type race that involved finding 12 clues in under 4 hours all over downtown Dallas) last weekend:
Sean, Julie, Chris and Sarah before we started the race!
We had both said to each other…our kids would enjoy running around this park full of longhorn statues….so that’s where we headed. And the best part was that it was free!
Nothing beats a statue you can actually sit on.
Overlooking all the longhorns and the girl in the princess dress.
Some people read what is written on the rock and some people slide down it!
The horse and cowboy that herd all these longhorns.
Murphys love crossing over water.
My kids are strong!
Bennett could not get over how big these statues were.
After a rousing good time with the longhorns, we headed to fulfill a much talked about dream of Bauer’s…a ride on the DART train. Being in Plano now, we cross over the tracks of the DART train to and from school everyday. So this dream gets talked about A LOT.
Since we were already downtown, we knew there had to be a station close by and we found one after about 10 minutes of walking. A nice security guard helped Sean buy some tickets and we boarded the train…GOING SOUTH (from downtown).
It was an experience to say the least. Our kids enjoyed it and we got back to the West End safe and sound. I even took a few pictures to document the adventure.
I don’t think he really understood the scope of this adventure.
Bauer looked outside the whole time & narrated everything he saw for the whole train!
Bennett trying to buy some more tickets while we waiting for our return trip.
Playing and waiting for the next train!
We ended the day at Allison’s basketball game at St. Pius in Dallas. It was so fun to watch her play basketball and relive the days that I played basketball in that same gym. Weird how nothing has really changed about the place in over 20 years!
On Sunday, we took the dogs out to the park before our day got started. I told Sean we had to start taking more pics of them because they have easily doubled (maybe tripled) in size since we brought them home. They really are amazingly good puppies despite chewing everything they can find and taking it into the wasteland of the backyard before we can see it. The other day I was eating a Lean Cuisine and I finished it and put the plastic container on my night stand. I went to check on one of the kids and by the time I came back my fork was across the room and the container was never to be seen again.
These pups are either fast and furious or they are asleep…only two options in puppy world.
It was a great weekend to say the least. Despite the challenges of raising kids and being on 24/7 as a parent, adventures like these really do make me appreciate the phase of life we are in.
But have no doubt after a morning full of fighting (Bree and Bauer) and screaming (Bennett), I was beyond thrilled to drop off each and every one of those Murphy kids at school and head to my quiet office at UTD.
Yep, this full-time working thing is a good gig!
