The Dudley Four: Stay-cation 2014

John decided to take a week of vacation at the end of April/first week of May. We talked about going out of town, but in the end we decided to spend the week at home, relaxing and doing some fun family things right here in Birmingham (we also finished up a few projects that have been lingering around here at home). Unfortunately, the first 2 days of our stay-cation were filled with thunderstorms and tornado warnings, but the weather cleared up on Wednesday, and we spent lots of time outside the rest of the week.

On Tuesday (during a break in the bad weather), John and I took Big Sister on a day date to the McWane Center (thanks to Grammie for taking care of Little Bud!). I was amazed how easy life is with a 2/1 parent/child ratio ;) We had a great time checking out all of the exhibits. After we finished up at the McWane Center, we headed for lunch at Chuy's (Big Sister requested quesadillas) and capped of the day with a trip to Steel City Pops (blood orange is Big Sister's current "favorite flavor" - we can't WAIT for them to open up their drive through location closer to our side of town!!).

Wednesday afternoon we picked up Big Sister and Little Bud's cousin at the bus stop after school (with her parent's permission of course!) and headed to Desoto Caverns. We bought season passes last year when John's grandparents were in town, and it was a good investment. We've been 3 times, and the kids LOVE it (well...Big Sister does, Little Bud gets frustrated waiting when there's something he's too little to do - although he excitedly said, "bumper cars!" as soon as he saw them - he can talk so much more than he lets on!). It's a much better experience than a play place like Chuck E Cheese's (it's never very crowded and all the fun stuff is outside), but it's on the same "fun" level for the kids.

All in all, it was a great week. We enjoyed spending extra time together as a family, and we were all sad when Monday morning rolled around and John had to head back to work...