E had to go to Arkansas on business this week.  Since he was driving, we decided to go with him for once and make our own mini-vacation out of it.  Here's the summation of the trip, in jump rope form:
Up:  Family Trip!
Down:  Long drive.
Up:  We would get to spend some time with E that we would have missed out on.
Down:  We were going to have to spend the day Thursday trapped in a hotel while E would take the car to work.
Up:  I had plans to occupy the kids all day at the indoor swimming pool at the hotel.
Down:  The hotel actually had no indoor pool.
Up:  E's coworker was going to be driving, so the kids and I would get to keep our car.
Down:  E's coworker opted to not get a rental car.
Up:  The girls were good on the road (They ♥ 'Ponyo').
Down:  The hotel was in a run-down area with nothing good to do within walking distance.
Up:  The girls were stoked to stay in a hotel for the first time.
Down:  The girls wouldn't sleep.
Up:  No rain-- a nice day to walk... to KFC.
Down:  No patience left by the time E got back to the hotel for the evening.
Up:  I found a Target in Arkansas and felt a bit subversive going there for diapers instead of Wal-Mart.
Down:  E had less patience left than I did that evening, so we just went to CiCi's Pizza for dinner.  The girls were foul and the pizza was lame.
Up:  The dessert was tasty.
Down:  Baby Duck had a major meltdown after dinner when I tried to cheer her up by taking her to a $1 jewelry store.
Up:  The girls slept from sheer exhaustion.
Down:  I didn't sleep well.
Up:  We decided to make the trip home fun by driving through the Ozarks and visiting a cave.
Down:  I couldn't drive very fast or look at the scenery because of the 7% grade and the hairpin curves in some areas.
Up:  E took pictures of the scenery for me.
Down:  We worried a bit that the kids would panic and hate the cave.
Up:  The kids loved the cave so much they wanted to tour the second cave as well.
Down:  I got a bellyache from eating Sonic for lunch and not going for a 5K run directly after.
Up:  The kids did not scream when I said "no" to getting any ice cream.
Down:  We had to drive through several torrential downpours on the rest of the trip.
Up:  We were home by bedtime with more ups than downs.

CL