Car trips and car movies

Darby had altar service this morning, and with my step-mother in Arizona with my dad, I took the kids to mass instead. After mass we headed up to Stillwater, OK for a gem and rock show. It seemed like a good idea when I first read about it in the paper, because Darby has a budding interest in rocks and has a small rock collection. However, I had some regrets not long after departing.

My last trip to Stillwater was back in 1994, during college, when I carpooled up there with some classmates for a symposium. I fell asleep in the van on that trip, and so have since had a wildly inaccurate idea of how long it took to get there. I was thinking it was more like going to Norman, just in the opposite direction. But no, it was about 70 miles, only half of which is interstate, so it took about an hour and a half to get there. So, no trivial trip this was. I may as well have been going to Tulsa.

It helped not one bit that I got flat lost looking for the exposition center where the show was. We ended up on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere. I had to get back in range of a cellular signal in order to look the center up on the internet and call them for directions. Turns out I was only off by a few miles, but it was a crucial few miles in the wrong direction.

Once we finally got there, we saw some pretty cool stuff. In my opinion, the coolest thing there was a piece of art made entirely of selenite crystals. There were also several cool fossils aside from the art displays, and the girls' favorite part, the kids zone.



In the kids zone, the girls got to color pictures, paint rocks, put plastic fossil kits together, and hunt for rocks and fossils. The rock hunting probably took the longest. Each kid got a tin can to fill up with the best rocks they could find. They didn't skimp, so now we have A LOT of rocks in our "collection".



The rock painting took awhile also. Basically they each picked a rock that resembled something and then they tried to paint that object onto the rock. Shelby made a car, while Darby went with the much simpler option of a lady bug. Overall, I think the girls had enough fun to justify the trip, though I was worried for a moment at first.







Before getting back on the road, we ate at Joe's, where Shelby flashed her attitude to the waiter ("I did NOT order orange juice, I ordered root beer. Bring me a root beer! (pause for effect) AND a bendy straw!"). Coincidentally, the shirt said it all.



Of course, no surprise here, Shelby asked for and received a free balloon. BUT, for the second time in as many weeks, Shelby experienced rapid balloon loss, as her balloon floated into the sky when she let it slip off her wrist in the parking lot.



So we finally got back on the road home, and you'd think we had enough for one day, BUT, there was one thing we still hadn't done, though I wasn't sure we'd make it on time. We rolled into the parking lot in downtown OKC right at 7pm, and just our luck there was a 7pm showing of the movie Cars. By the time we got in there, we had missed the previews, and didn't get great seats, but those were negligible issues.

The movie was AWESOME. Definitely one of the best Pixar movies. If you watch NASCAR to any degree you'll definitely like the film, but even if not, it's very entertaining all the way through. No dull spots. In fact, the actual movie blew the previews away. Usually they show all the best parts in the previews and you end up disappointed in the movie, but in this case, the previews didn't do the movie justice. If you haven't gone yet, go see it soon. You'll not regret it.