Onward to Kentucky!

[Follow our road trip here using the tag Road Trip 2019 ]

We left Eureka Springs in the morn­ing and head­ed for our next des­ti­na­tion: Kentucky! I don’t know why we decid­ed to go there, real­ly, I guess we just had­n’t been before.

At the farmhouse

We found a small farm­house out­side of Lexington. Beautiful and peace­ful, and a big yard look­ing out onto farmland.

A delicious dinner at Gaskin’s Cabin Steakhouse

A delicious Ribeye

[Follow our road trip here using the tag Road Trip 2019 ]

tl;dr: 5 stars! Come vis­it and enjoy!

This is a review of Gaskin’s Cabin Steakhouse, which we vis­it­ed on our first night in Eureka Springs. (See “A Week in Eureka Springs” for details on that leg of our trip.) I have nev­er writ­ten one of these before, but I was quite impressed and if I’m going to do this ever again, I believe should begin on an up-note!

A small place on the side of a dark road, we missed it at first in the dark. By the time we arrived, unpacked the chil­dren, and made it inside, it was 20 min­utes to clos­ing. We asked the host “are we too late to get a table?” The response was heart-warm­ing: “You’re right on time!”

We often get sec­ond glances when we walk into a restau­rant, espe­cial­ly an upscale one, with three small chil­dren in tow. I did­n’t sense any of that here. (Our chil­dren are gen­er­al­ly well-behaved, but I have no rea­son to expect oth­ers to know that.) We were tak­en quick­ly to our table and the staff was friend­ly to us and to the littles.

Gaskins Cabin Steakhouse Menu
A non-over­whelm­ing menu, full of deli­cious options.
Burgundy Mushroom Soup

I ordered the Burgundy Mushroom Soup, and it was so fan­tas­tic that my wife decid­ed to order her own after tast­ing mine. Even the girls liked it! I would return for this soup alone.

When the main course arrived, I met one of the best steak­house rib eyes I have ever encoun­tered. Prime, ten­der, and cooked per­fect­ly, every bite was bet­ter than the last. I was stuffed at the end but I still want­ed more. I took a bite of the gar­lic lin­guine that we had ordered for the chil­dren to share, and I was sim­i­lar­ly impressed.

Garlic Linguine with Chicken

Simply put: I will go out of my way to return here someday.

A week in Eureka Springs

Eureka Springs Locomotive

[Follow our road trip here using the tag Road Trip 2019 ]

It was time to leave the AirBnB we were stay­ing at, but we weren’t sure where we should go next. So, we found a place just an hour or so away, just south of the Arkansas bor­der; a lit­tle town called Eureka Springs.

On the way in, we passed a steak­house that caught our inter­est. As soon as we found our new place and dropped off the dogs, we head­ed back out. I’m glad that we did, as it was a fan­tas­tic meal. (See Gaskin’s Cabin Steakhouse for more.) It was a bit tough to find in on the dark roads, but it was worth the search.

The next morn­ing, we drove into town. Eureka Springs is a beau­ti­ful lit­tle town, with lots of shops and places to eat and walk. It is not ter­ri­bly child-friend­ly, though. We did­n’t see many oth­er fam­i­lies with so many lit­tle ones (and a stroller) in tow. The side­walks are nar­row and there are ran­dom steps up or down. All the action is along a sin­gle street, and there are trol­leys that can help you get around, so we were able to over­come those obsta­cles with­out too much trouble.

We let the girls take turns with the snap­shot camera.

We ate a late break­fast at the Mud Street Annex, locat­ed on the main drag. Loved the ambiance and the food. It was sit­u­at­ed direct­ly over a creek, with a win­dow in the floor look­ing down into it. You could tell the tourists ver­sus the locals by who stooped down to look through that win­dow. (Of course, I had to take a look, and a picture!)

A couple of weeks in Springfield

At The Zoo

[Follow our road trip here using the tag Road Trip 2019 ]

We have been in Springfield, MO for a week and a half now and have decid­ed to extend our stay anoth­er few days. Kenieshiear and I real­ly like it here. Also, we’re not sure where we want to go next.

We’ve tak­en a look at a few hous­es for sale, and even made an offer on one. That offer fell through, but it’s pret­ty sur­pris­ing how much I’m ready to find some­thing. There is a house that I real­ly like and it’s prob­a­bly in our price range if we fina­gle a few things. The tim­ing might not be right, though.

The littles at the zoo
Took the lit­tle ones to the Dickerson Park Zoo. It was our sec­ond time, and we’ll prob­a­bly be back a third time before we leave town!
At the mall
We had some fun at the mall too!

Driving to Springfield

Driving to Springfield

[Follow our road trip here using the tag Road Trip 2019 ]

Leaving the cen­tral Texas area turned out to be much more dif­fi­cult than we antic­i­pat­ed. It was as if we had been trapped in a grav­i­ta­tion­al well or some­thing. It took us an extra cou­ple of hours to get the car packed up, even though we had just packed it to stay at the con­do a few days ear­li­er. The plan was to stop by the house to pull some things out of the garage for our ten­ant; that took longer than antic­i­pat­ed. We did­n’t get far until I real­ized that I had lost my keys; we had to go back to the house to track them down.

Our clan final­ly got to the high­way around 4pm. I had hoped to be on the road by 11am. It meant a night dri­ve and a late night arrival in Springfield. The girls did­n’t want to sleep because they were wor­ried about miss­ing out on pass­ing into Missouri, even though that was hours away. We still had to get out of Texas and go through Oklahoma first! We had 9 and a half hours of road time, and every stop added at least 30 min­utes on top of that.

Entering Oklahoma

It took a while to get out of Texas and into Oklahoma. By the time we crossed the bor­der, it was dark. Kenieshiear had hoped to stop by a lit­tle Amish shop off the side of the road, but they were closed. We did get to see the casi­nos all lit up in their gar­ish fash­ion, though.

Driving through Oklahoma was long and bor­ing. Not much to look at dur­ing the day, and less at night. It did give me an oppor­tu­ni­ty to think and men­tal­ly com­pose this post. My fam­i­ly slept and I thought and drove. I think the worst part was the low speed lim­it. Whenever we drove through a small town, the lim­it would drop to 45 or less for a mile or two and that threw off pace by more than I expected.

There is an Interstate that would have avoid­ed these issues. That would have had us swing­ing out of the way and would­n’t have saved any time. We would­n’t have had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to laugh when the lady at Taco Bell com­ment­ed “Spending that FAFSA mon­ey, huh?” It would­n’t have been as much fun.

The dogs resting
Did I men­tion we had the dogs with us in the back?

Finally, Missouri!

After sev­er­al hours in Oklahoma, we final­ly made it to a toll road with decent speed lim­its and were short­ly after that enter­ing Missouri. Just a cou­ple of hours to go! At this point, every­body was asleep, though Kenieshiear would wake up and ask me if I was okay every time we hit a bump in the road.

I was pret­ty tired, so I don’t remem­ber too much to add for this leg of the trip. We safe­ly made it to our airbnb around 3ish. By the time we got the chil­dren and dogs and stuff out of the car, it was 4ish. The chil­dren work us up at 7ish.

More updates to come.

Another road trip?

On The Road Again

[I know my last post (from December!) was about a road trip, and I have a nev­er-pub­lished recap of that trip, but I real­ly intend to do a bet­ter job with updates this time around!]

[Follow our road trip here using the tag Road Trip 2019 ]

We are off on anoth­er grand adven­ture! We are real­ly going all-in this time, too. We have leased out our house and are in the process of buy­ing a con­do not too far away, but that has­n’t closed yet and will prob­a­bly not close for anoth­er month or so. In the mean­time, we are going nomadic, pack­ing the dogs, chil­dren, and all of our neces­si­ties into the fam­i­ly car.

Our first stop will be Missouri, but that’s about the end of our planning.

View From the Condo

At the moment, we are spend­ing a few nights in the con­do we have put an offer on. The views are mag­nif­i­cent, and I have been work­ing from the bal­cony. We will be pack­ing up and head­ing north soon!

Road Trip 2018 Recap

I pre­vi­ous­ly wrote that we were going on an impromp­tu road trip. I was plan­ning on doing updates here as our road trip pro­gressed. That did­n’t work out as planned. We kept so busy and I did­n’t end up pulling my lap­top out very much at all. The one mem­o­rable time that I did was to edit my wife’s first pod­cast episode! (I’m so proud of her.)

Kenieshiear and I were up the entire night before we left. We packed up for our­selves and the chil­dren, and then pack­ing up the car. We dri­ve a huge boat of an SUV, with three rows and a large car­go area (even with the third row up), and we also had a pod on the roof for more stuff. The car was packed to the brim. A crate for our dogs took up a lot of space in the back.

The plan was to get on the road around 5 am, but we were way too tired to leave that ear­ly. We end­ed up get­ting hit­ting the road clos­er to 10 or 11. The first leg of the trip was to Springfield, MO, where we had an Air BnB wait­ing for us. Total on-the-road time was just over 10 hours, but because we had to stop often, and every stop last­ed at least an hour, the dri­ve took much longer, and we arrived quite late.

The chil­dren were fan­tas­tic, though. They were so well-behaved, and they had a lot of fun lis­ten­ing to music, play­ing games and such. As it got lat­er, they all slept well in their car seats. The dogs did well, also; there were sev­er­al times that I for­got that they were even back there.

We’re going on a road trip

Next week, we’re pack­ing up the chil­dren and the dogs. We are head­ing out on a grand adven­ture to see the win­ter.  To begin, we’re head­ing north into the plains.  We will spend a week at a house in Missouri.  I will be work­ing from there, because I don’t have any PTO left.  It is not the best sce­nario, but I will make it work!

It is the first extend­ed trip we’ll do as a fam­i­ly since my youngest was born, and it is the first ever with the dogs.  I’m still iffy about the dogs, to be hon­est.  My wife thinks it’ll work out just fine, though, and I trust her.

Why no photos of my children?

You may have noticed that there are pho­tos of me on my posts, but there are not any of my chil­dren.  This is an inten­tion­al act on my part, and it is dif­fi­cult to accom­plish.  Most of my pho­tos these days fea­ture at least one of my children.

So, why no pic­tures?  The inter­net these days is awash with pho­tos of peo­ples’ chil­dren, and why not?  Parents are under­stand­ably proud of their lit­tle ones’ accom­plish­ments and want to show them off.  I do too, and I do post plen­ty of videos and pho­tos, but with access lim­it­ed to fam­i­ly.  I don’t even share with my friends.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think it is right for every­body.  It is my per­son­al pref­er­ence to keep our chil­dren out of the pub­lic eye.  You may have noticed that I don’t even pub­licly post their names.  I feel that it is impor­tant that I give them the clean­est pos­si­ble slate as they grow up.  I believe post­ing their names and pho­tos pub­licly is not going to help them in the long run.

Continue read­ing “Why no pho­tos of my children?”

When I am insecure in who I am, I am insecure in who God is”

I can’t take cred­it for this title.  I heard it dur­ing a Celebrate Recovery tes­ti­mo­ny and it got me thinking.

Lately, I have been strug­gling with the choic­es for my future.  I am strug­gling with mak­ing the choice between rid­ing out my cur­rent job, tak­ing a new one, or jump­ing into my busi­ness with­out a net?  Where am I sup­posed to be lead­ing my family?

Continue read­ingWhen I am inse­cure in who I am, I am inse­cure in who God is””