Hannibal for Mother's Day

Now that Ryan and I have a growing family, one of our goals is to spend more time getting out and doing things with just our nuclear family. So often, we let finances or busy schedules get in the way of making a priority of just getting out of town. This weekend we had some folks over to our house from our Financial Peace community group on Friday, then on Saturday we got up and got on the road to Hannibal, Missouri.

I had never been to Hannibal. I'll be honest, I didn't expect a whole lot. (I've seen too many townships advertise in magazines that they're tourist destinations when really all the town boasts is an Interstate and an Olive Garden.) But I was pleasantly surprised. When we arrived, there was a car show with about 100 cars and a big party atmosphere downtown. (I was expecting maybe 10 or 20 cars, but this was the whole town.) We had some lunch at an old-timely restaurant. We enjoyed a plate of barbecue, green beans, and corn. It's been a long time since I've gotten real home-cooking at a restaurant like that. Afterwards, we all got ice cream at an old fashioned ice cream shop. We decided not to go on the riverboat because the girls are still a bit young to be out on the water. We opted instead for playing on a playground on the riverfront.

In the afternoon, we went on a cave tour of the Mark Twain cave, which is written about in the Adventures of Tom Sawyer. The cave was really unique in that it's not a typical cave with stalagmites and stalactites. Instead, it's just the inside of a bluff, with stones stacked one on top of another, but with a crevice that runs through the middle of it, tall enough for a person to stand up in. The tour was fine until Lilly decided she really needed to use the bathroom (after holding it from 7 a.m. until about 3 p.m.) and we were stuck in the back of a tour inside a cave, that was single file with no way to move through the cave. Luckily we were able to finish the tour and Lilly found a potty and all was well. (After on another cave tour in Louisville last year, Ryan asked if maybe we hold off on any more cave tours until the kids are older!)

I forgot to mention that we brought Duke along. We had to drive to Quincy in order to get a dog-friendly hotel. We had dinner at a nice Japanese restaurant and then hit the pool in the hotel. After a rocky night of sleep (with both girls waking up multiple times in the night) we made it to the next morning. We quickly toured the Mark Twain museum, as well as Sam Clemens boyhood home, the Huck Finn house, etc. By then, the girls were pretty tired so we got on the road.

Since it was Mother's Day, we stopped in St. Charles on the way back home. We had a lovely lunch out on a patio. The weather was absolutely perfect... about 80 and sunny, but sitting under an umbrella it was just right.

I won't lie... as fun a trip as it was, we were dealing with dirty diapers, bottles, feeding, naps and skipped naps, etc. etc. Going on a vacation with little kids really isn't a vacation. But still, I'm glad we made the effort and hopefully we can do more things like this in the future. It really did make me want to read more Mark Twain. And maybe one day, when Lilly and Abby get older, I can chaperone their school trips up there and maybe learn a little more than this time around, when I wasn't concerned with poopy diapers and feeding time!