Texas Trip #5–Part Two

The day after I got to the K’s (Thursday), they both had to go in to work.  So I had a quiet day to myself … just me and Bosley.

I did a lot of playing with my new “toy”, a little reading, caught up on “American Idol” and sat out on their back patio enjoying the warm weather and reading.

We waited on Kale’s tomatoes to get ripe while I was there, but they waited until I left… and then the squirrels got to them.  Kale is on serious squirrel patrol these days.

I felt so bad for Kayla.  It turned out she had to work every day, but one (Sunday), when I was there (because someone went on vacation)… she even had to work longer hours than normal (11 hour days).

Friday morning, after Kayla left for work, Kale and I headed out to the mall to the Apple store.  I bought a smart cover for my iPad.  It took me forever to decide on a color…

 

… but I finally went with…

We met Kayla for lunch and spent most of the rest of the day hanging out… that’s pretty much what this trip was about.  I was really looking forward to being there and just relaxing and visiting with the kids and I got lots of that!  There’s not much, if anything, I’d rather be doing.

Has It Been Two Weeks? My Birthday and Texas Trip #5

Today is David’s birthday – “Happy Birthday, Dave!”

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I can’t believe it’s been over two weeks since I’ve posted.  It just goes to show you that without structure, I am wandering aimlessly.  (Do I need to do Project 365 to actually keep a blog??)

Two days after my last post – it was my birthday and the present I gave myself was a trip to Texas to see Kale and Kayla.  I went ALONE.  I flew alone.  Did you hear that? And I did it without nerve medicine. Haha!

Before I left, I knew I needed some Maddie time, so I picked her up from daycare  (there’s nothing better than hearing her scream “Mémère” when she sees me come in the door!) and off we went to Wal-mart.

When you live in the sticks, travel isn’t all that “convenient”.  It takes three hours to get to the airport.  The flight from Little Rock to Houston is only an hour or so… unless you get a plane with THESE…

…then, it takes about two hours. Ha!

Kale picked me up from the airport and shortly after we got home, Kayla got off work. I miss them SO much, they are always a sight for sore eyes! We went to eat at a really neat little "family" cafe (Eden Cafe) and I got chicken pot pie.  I haven’t had that in forever and it was so good! (I crunched up my crust before getting a picture. Ha!)

After supper, the “kids” gave me my birthday gift – an iPad2!!

It was a hard gift to accept, but I pretty much ran with it after I got over being overwhelmed!

All in all, it was one of the best birthdays ever! (That’s saying a lot when you get to be my age.)

I’ll post more about my trip tomorrow.  Until then,

* * * * * *
Dear Maddie,

Look what Mémère got for you!

Mass Transit

Kale is an engineer.  He’s kinda been one since he was in Elementary School.  While we were in DC visiting all those museums, we saw some pretty neat inventions.  It got us talking about some of the “inventions” Kale had as a boy.  When he was in about 5th grade, he decided his bedroom was too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter. (There was only one air register in his bedroom)  So, he built a box (I think it was a Kleenex box) over his vent with a whole cut in it to pipe some connected paper towel rolls out of and piped the air right up to his bed next to his pillow.

It was around that time that he also invented a contraption from his light switch to his ceiling with a couple of pull cords to be able to turn the light off at night or back on again in the dark without having to get out of bed.

It was always stuff like that.

So, it doesn’t surprise us at all that he is so intrigued by modern technology.  He has every gadget known to man and he reads manuals just for the fun of it!

When we were in DC, he was most intrigued, I think, with the mass transit system they have.  When it comes to moving people, they’ve got it down… and he was impressed!  I have to admit, even though my mind doesn’t usually think on such things, I thought it was pretty impressive too… and Kayla thought the metro was just like a ride at Silver Dollar City!

Here are a couple of pictures that Kale took while we were there.  (He took TONS of photos, or should I say gigabytes, but they’re on his computer. I borrowed these.)

 

Recovering From Vacation…

I can’t believe it’s been 10 days since I last posted.  I don’t know how those of you who post daily do it.  For the past month and a half I’ve been training 3-4 nights a week, in addition to my “real job”.  (This week, I’m training 5 nights.)  And, I’ve been playing catch-up at work since I was on vacation last week.  I’m finding it hard to find time to post, but I did get caught up with my blog reading.

Our vacation was SO fun.  We flew out on Saturday MORNING at 6:15, so we had to be at the airport by 5:00 or so.  We left Kale’s apartment at 4:20 AM… the only thing I know about what that time of day looks like is the view I have from my bed to the bathroom.

We got to DC and dropped our luggage at the hotel (we couldn’t check in til later in the day), so we headed out to explore the historic town we stayed in … Alexandria.  My favorite thing about Alexandria was the historic Christ Church.  Courtney took this picture of the inside of the church:

On our first full day we went to the Holocaust Museum.  When you get on the elevator to go up to take the tour they show you a short (30 second or so) video.  I started crying there… and when we got off the elevator you step into a room and right in front of you is a big wall of video that just hits you in the face.  I pretty much lost it there.  The thing I’ll remember the most from this museum was the “room of shoes” and the “walls of photos”:

 

The above two photos are from the web.

(I was so sad to hear about the shooting that took place at the Holocaust Museum today.  I was so impressed with the security every where we went.  It saddens me to think anyone could or would do such a thing.)

Afterward, we were going to hit the other museums, but then we saw the Washington Monument and just started walking, and walking, and walking.

We saw the WWII Memorial and the Reflecting Pool and the Lincoln Memorial, the Korean War Memorial. Strolled by the White House.  Every where you look, it is simply amazing!

 

The next day, we started out at Arlington National Cemetery.  Our feet and legs were SO sore from the day before, but we did a lot more walking at the cemetery.  We were able to see a short, wreath ceremony where “taps” was played just before watching the changing of the guard at The Tomb of the Unknowns.  Another highlight for all of us!!

Afterwards, we headed to the Smithsonian Castle, Air and Space Museum, Art Museum, and briefly into the Museum of Natural History (which was WAY too crowded, so Tyler walked around for a while as we sat outside… we went back on Friday).  In the art museum, I was thrilled to be able to see some original art work by an artist that I’ve been very interested in for a few years, Abbott Handerson Thayer. 

Lots more walking… and lots of hurting feet and legs.

Tuesday, we headed to the National Archives (which houses the original Magna Carta, Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States) and the Museum of American History… where we enjoyed seeing Seinfeld’s “Puffy Shirt”, Dorothy’s “ruby slippers” and lots of great historic US President exhibits.Wednesday morning we left early for Mount Vernon (home of George Washington).  I can’t say enough about how much I loved Mount Vernon.

It makes me want to go back in time and see the estate as a working farm.

Wednesday night we took a “Monuments by Moonlight” bus tour – our favorite thing from the whole week… except for the fact we got stormed on seriously.  If we had it to do over again, we would’ve taken this tour at the very beginning of the week.  DC after dark is gorgeous!!

Pretty much from Wednesday night on it poured. And poured.  So we did a lot of this…

 

… and eating!! We ate five large bags of Peanut M&Ms during the week.

We tried to go out on Thursday, but the rain kept us from doing much, so we headed back to Alexandria where Kale and Kayla went back to the room and Tyler, Courtney and I shopped King Street.

We went out again on Friday afternoon to revisit the Museum of Natural History and the Vietnam Memorial (we had only seen it at night), but after we got done there, it started raining again.  The subway was 7/10s of a mile away, so we got soaked going back… but it was worth it.

Since I’ve been home I’ve found out that we didn’t see near all there is to see in DC.  We definitely want to go back again some day.

Being there really made me more interested in our American History.  I am so grateful for the history of this great nation and pray that someday we will return to the foundation it was built on.

I, also, am so happy to have gone with these people… who were SO much fun!!

(Kale took this photo of Tyler and Courtney right after Tyler did a Michael Jackson moon walk on the slick sidewalk.  We got so tickled!)

Oh, and I forgot to mention who I ran into on Pennsylvania Avenue…