Chocolate Castles as wel

Our friends back in California sent us home with this blessing last week, “we are so glad you are going home before we all sound like Paula Deen”. Seems that our friends there pick up the southern words of ya’ll and all ya’ll quickly. Stopping back by Phoenix to break up our trip, (who am I kidding, we stopped to see the grandkids)I found myself leaving Arizona sounding like I was 4 yrs old again. Randy looked at me kind of funny when I ask him if he wanted me to pack some “sammies” (sandwiches) for the woad. The first 100 miles driving out of Phoenix I was humming “hot dog, hot dog, hot diggity dog” from Mickey’s Club House. Of course, Randy picked up a few of the grandkid habits also. He wanted to know how old is too old to run around the house in underwear, but I assured him he pasted that age many moons ago. 

We did gather quite a bit of wisdom on this trip. Here is some that you might want to print up to take along on your next adventure around the states.. We traveled another 3600 miles in the last 25 days so we feel that we are almost “travel experts” after having now put about 9000 miles on the car since February. Of course you don’t have to take our advice, but if you don’t you might just be very “sowwie”.

1. Do not spill M&M’s in your car. They might not melt in your hand, but trust me on this, they do melt in the car.

2. Do NOT, I repeat, Do NOT, eat spicy green chiles while on the road, the trip home will take double the normal driving time.

3. Use your grandkids as needed,. I had a chocolate craving while on the road so into Wallyworld we went. When the cashier was checking us out, she stared at me as if to think, “lady, your shorts are already to tight, I don’t think this is really what you should be buying.” To take the focus off me I causally mentioned that we were on our way to see our grandkids, she smiled and said, “of course you don’t want to show up there without candy, do you?” I didn’t have the heart to tell her that that candy, plus another stop for candy would never make it to Phoenix. It wasn’t my fault that she thought the candy was for the precious little darlings.

4. Be sure to pack the next larger size of clothes that you have in your closet. We learned that eating fast food 3 times a day, plus all the snackies that we brought along, does tend to put a few ounces on our well  tuned bodies…

5. When staying with our kids/grandkids, you need to remember that the television will never be tuned to anything but cartoons so have your favorite TV shows recorded at home. You will NEVER have the opportunity to watch them until you return.

6. Eat at all the restaurants that you have been dying to try while driving. Once you get to the grandkids house, you will need to buy TUMS to help digest McDonalds or Taco Bell that completes their daily diet plan..

7. Increase your data plan on your smart phone before leaving. The little sweet darlings only love us for our phones and thus, every game app has now replaced all my exercise and health food recipes app.

8. Take lots of plastic zip lock bags. Because several tubes of cosmetics “blew” driving from 6000 ft down to 1000, we had such fun cleaning up shampoo out of everything in the bag.

9. Be sure you have lots of Kleenix on hand as you walk out the door to head home. No matter the different life style that you have to adjust, it is just never easy to leave grandkids, twust me on this. Maybe singing a little song will help, “hot dog, hot dog, hot diggity dog.”