Road Trip! Part Two

I’ve got so much to catch up on that I’ll be breaking the rest of the road trip into as many parts as necessary. Here’s the second installment.

We arrived in Oxford, Mississippi Saturday afternoon, checked into the hotel and then headed out to explore the town. I’m sure lots of you are asking why we would choose to stop in Oxford so a quick explanation. Oxford is the home of William Faulkner and an amazing independent bookstore called Square Books. Brian and I have been saying for years that we would like to visit Oxford and couldn’t pass up the opportunity to visit on our way to Richmond. 

Square Books is actually three bookstores, all located on the historic square in downtown Oxford. They have a regular trade store, a remainder store and a children’s only store. On Saturday we headed straight to the children’s only store, called Square Books, Jr... remember this picture?

That’s a Square Books, Jr. t-shirt he’s wearing. 

Oliver had a great time wreaking havoc on the store and we left with a brand new t-shirt to replace the one above.

We went to dinner at a restaurant called Ajax Diner which came highly recommended by everyone we’ve ever known who has been to Oxford. The food was delicious, especially the sides. The sweet potato casserole was so rich it would have made a great dessert.

We headed back to the hotel, took a quick dip in the pool and then put Oliver to bed and spent a few hours reading some Faulkner (we are such nerds) before turning in.

On Sunday morning we ate at Big Bad Breakfast, a breakfast joint and smokehouse. They make everything from scratch, including their numerous sausages that they smoke on site. Breakfast was unbelievably good. As most of you know, Oliver is quite the biscuit aficionado. We gave him biscuits at Big Bad Breakfast and got this response

I’d say he approves. After breakfast we drove over to the Ole Miss campus and walked around a bit. It is a beautiful campus with some amazing old buildings. Unfortunately, it was already so humid that morning that most of my pictures are fuzzy.

I kept joking with Brian that you could see the air in Mississippi it was so thick with humidity. (Plus, it got up into the triple digits every day we were there. Yuck).

After nap time we headed down to the square so that we could explore the other two Square Books locations. We got down to the square and started at the main store. Oliver lasted about ten minutes before he was bored so Brian kindly took him over to Square Books, Jr. so that I could continue to explore. After a few minutes in the store I bumped into my friend, Cody, who is the head buyer at Square Books. We already had plans to get together for dinner on Sunday night but I hadn’t expected to run into him at the store. I was so glad I did, though, since he was able to show me all the back of the house stuff that I was really interested in - where they do their receiving, the buying, how they run events, etc. It was awesome to get the personal tour. Unfortunately, I lost track of time and poor Brian was stuck chasing Oliver all over Square Books, Jr. for over an hour. I’m so sorry, Brian! Thanks for letting me be the giant bookstore geek that I am!

After checking out the bookstores, we headed over to Rowan Oak, William Faulkner’s house. It was a beautiful old plantation style house. Luckily there weren’t many people in the museum/house part because Oliver wanted to run around as much as possible. He lasted about ten minutes in the house before he decided it was time to go out and explore the grounds. He found the sticks particularly tasty:

Sunday evening we got together with Cody, his wife, Katie, and their absolutely angelic three month old daughter, Abby. Before dinner, Lyn, one of the other managers of Square Books, invited us all out to her house for cocktails. We met Cody, Katie and Abby at the hotel and followed them about fifteen miles outside of town to Lyn’s house. Lyn, her husband, Greg, and their daughter, Cecille, were the best hosts. Their house is unbelievable. It was a century-old house that they had been renovating, repairing and adding on to for years. We spent the evening sipping sangria in their recently renovated library - a book lover’s dream room. Cecille is eight and kept Oliver entertained the whole evening.

After cocktails, Cody, Katie, Abby, Brian, Oliver and I walked the few doors down to the restaurant. It was Sunday in Mississippi so there was, of course, only one choice for the main course - fried catfish! The place was amazing. It was miniscule, with an enormous wait list, great food, and live music. We didn’t even sit down until 8 o’clock so Oliver was completely exhausted through the meal (at one point he almost passed out into his plate) but once the music really got going he got up and started dancing and found his second wind. I find it hard to explain how awesome that whole evening was. Good drinks, good conversation, good new friends. Brian and I both agreed that it was up there on our list of all time best nights ever. We felt so welcome and at home. But we suffered a major parenting fail and didn’t get any pictures of the night except for this one of Oliver and Cecille (who Brian aptly described as a female Huckleberry Finn)

and this one of Oliver at the end of the festivities

He was done. Completely tuckered out. 

Speaking of tuckered out. That is what I am at this point so I will leave it here until next time.

Road Trip!

So, I never mentioned it on here because I wasn’t ever 100% sure it was going to happen but everything fell into place and right now Brian, Oliver and I are on day three of a ten day road trip that will take us from Austin all the way to Richmond, Virginia to see our friends Jennifer and Tom. I wasn’t sure it would happen because I kept thinking that maybe we were crazy to plan such a long trip with such a little kiddo but we decided to be brave and go for it. Although we never would have gotten everything done and packed and ready if my mom hadn’t helped us out so much. She came up on Wednesday of last week and did laundry, ran errands, watched the kiddo, bought diapers, etc. so that we’d be ready to go. If she hadn’t come up and helped I wouldn’t have gotten any sleep on Thursday night. Because of her I got 8 hours! Thanks, Mom!

On Friday we left Austin and drove all the way to Little Rock, Arkansas (about an 8 1/2 hour drive it took us from 9:30 to 5:30). Oliver was a total champ in the car until we were about 20 minutes outside of Little Rock. Then he melted down a bit but it was all forgotten by the time we pulled into the hotel. I drove most of the day on Friday and Brian split his time between the front seat when Oliver was napping and the back seat when Oliver needed someone to entertain him. On Laurie’s advice, we packed TONS of toys and books to keep Oliver busy. And it worked like a charm. Here he is at a little past the halfway point. Perfectly content and playing “If You’re Happy and You Know It” on his stereo for probably the fiftieth time that day.

We slung all of our stuff (and trust me, it’s a LOT of stuff) into our hotel room and headed out to let Oliver stretch his legs. Our hotel was right on the banks of the Arkansas River so we headed down to the hike and bike trail that ran along it. We weren’t expecting much but after walking about a quarter of a mile we found what must have looked like an oasis to Oliver... a splash pad! We didn’t have his suit with us but we stripped him down to his shorts and bare feet and set him loose. I’ve never seen a kid so happy to get wet and run around.

After he’d run around for awhile and worn himself out we loaded him back into the stroller and made our way slowly back to the hotel, passing a Korean gate along the way.

We changed him into his swimsuit and then headed to the hotel pool so that Brian and I could cool off. Back in the room we fed Oliver some dinner, gave him a bath and then started bedtime.

I had been nervous about trying to share a hotel room with Oliver since he’s slept in his own room since he was a month old but my mom came up with an awesome contraption to block off his pack n play from the rest of the hotel room. It’s an engineering marvel made of PVC piping and a custom sewn cover and it is the most amazing thing ever. Oliver goes into his pack n play, with an iPhone playing white noise directly underneath the crib, I draw the cover closed and he doesn’t even notice that Brian and I are in the room. He’s gone to sleep super easily both nights so far and has slept through the night just like normal. He’s napping in it as I type this. After O went to sleep on Friday night, Brian and I had an amazing pizza delivered from a restaurant nearby. We ate and drank wine and read and talked until we turned in a couple of hours later.

On Saturday, we got up early-ish (Oliver slept in until 6:45) and headed out to the Farmers’ Market that we had seen signs for the night before. It was at a place called the Little Rock Market, which is open seven days a week. Inside there are a bunch of different types of food booths - bakeries, middle eastern food, cajun food, bbq, etc. Brian and I had shrimp and grits and beignets for breakfast and Oliver had a biscuit. Yum! Outside they had the traditional farmers’ market which is only open on Tuesdays and Saturdays. We saw lots of beautiful fruits and veggies and great crafts, etc.

Then we headed back to the hotel and loaded up the car. I had wanted to see the Bill Clinton Presidential Library while we were in Little Rock but had decided against it since I couldn’t see wasting the money to get in when Oliver would probably be bored and we wouldn’t enjoy it. So I had decided that we would skip going into the museum but that we would check out the building and the grounds. On Friday night, I checked the museum’s website to get the address and noticed that Saturday, the 14th, was Bill Clinton’s birthday and that Bill Clinton’s birthday = free admission to the library! So, we go to go in and see the exhibits. It was perfect because it was super crowded and loud and Oliver didn’t bother anyone. (It’s weird how your definition of a “perfect” visit to a museum changes when you have a 16 month old).

After an hour at the museum we loaded into the car and headed to our next stop - Oxford, Mississippi. Just a short 3 1/2 hour drive. Along the way we stopped and had a picnic:

Tales from Oxford will come soon.