Holidays

We celebrated Thanksgiving in the usual way, good company and too much food.

As is our custom, Dax and I headed to our conference in Las Vegas the weekend after Thanksgiving. Our flight was uneventful, but our luggage suffered greatly.

That is two different pieces of luggage, too. We had to replace it while we were out there.

The check in at the hotel wasn't any better, but thankfully the rest of the trip improved from there. We had class all day, but enjoyed our evenings.

I almost forgot! Somewhere in the middle of all of this Dax and Wyatt joined the Texas State Guard. I'm so proud of my guys!

 

We got home in time for the crazy that is the holidays and year end. 

Avery came to stay with us again this year. We did our best to keep him looking festive and in the holiday spirit.

He's a good sport to indulge us this way.

OK......that's really all I can remember at this point. :0)

Too long again

I know. I know. It's been a really long time. But in my own defense, we got new phones and I had to get anything off my old phone. Then I had an update all typed in and I can't seem to get back to it. The drafted post is there, but I can't open it. Me and technology....get outta here.

The school year ended successfully. Wyatt was inducted into the National Honor Society. We are just so proud of all of our kids.

Still no new drivers. There has only been a little bit of interest with the other three, but hey, they have Addison to chauffeur them around.

Once more, my kindness was not repaid the way I wanted. Another of our cats had kittens!! That gives us a total of 11 cats around here. I've become the crazy cat lady without even trying.

Abigail went to spend most of July in Nova Scotia with her boyfriend, Avery, and his family. She really enjoyed it, but doesn't think she could live there. It was good for her to see what it might be like to live in other places. When she left there, she and Avery and his mom Jen, met us in Florida where we spent a week at Disney.

The rest of us took a few days driving to Florida.

We did a little high fashion shopping on the way.

We stopped at an alligator farm.

We also did a swamp tour in an air boat and saw a whole lot of alligators. The tour was with Swamp Fever and they were fantastic.

We finally made it to our destination and got to see Abigail again.....but we sure missed her on the way.

Taking the good with the bad

Just for the record, I have been trying to post this update for a week and have had one problem after another. Fingers crossed that it works this time.



It's that time of year again. We are full on into tax season, but life still demands our attention. Sometimes it's a little overwhelming.

Addison and I recently spent the weekend on the coast. I took her to meet up with some friends to go watch a hockey game. The view from our room was quite nice.

She and Abigail also competed in the county fair's life skills division. Addison made a lot of food and Abigail entered some art work. There were blue and red ribbons received.

One of the entries that Addison made was lemon marmalade. It's pretty good stuff, and we've still got several jars.

Kirsten competed in an area art competition and received a score of 4 out of a possible 4. She was thrilled. Then they lost her artwork.....which did not thrill her. But, word is that it has been found so we're just waiting for them to let her know when she can pick it up.

Unfortunately, there's also been bad. While Addison and I were at the coast, one of our dogs got really sick and Dax had to rush her to the emergency vet. However, her kidneys were failing and he had to make the tough decision of putting her to sleep. Even when something is irreversibly wrong, and you know it's for the best, it's still a hard choice to make.

Then, less than a week later, Abigail had to make the same choice with her guinea pig. He had developed a tumor that could not be removed and that was causing more problems and it was obvious he was suffering. 

We still haven't gotten adjusted to their absences. 

We look forward to better things, and now it's time to start planning for Junior/Senior Prom.

More summer fun

The girls are still happy with their new glasses, but because of soccer (and already being hit in the face with the ball) I encouraged Addison to get contacts. She had her appointment and fitting last week and is still working on getting comfortable with putting them in and taking them out. She may decide that it's more trouble than it's worth. They've only given her a temporary set because they didn't have her prescription in stock.

We have reaped the benefits of the bounty of a friend's garden. He asked Dax if we would like some peaches, and then showed up with this!

That's a lot of peaches!! And he also brought us some giant tomatoes.

Kirsten spent the week in Houston visiting her grandparents. Everyone else had things going on, so she went by herself to play only child for the week. While she was gone, we volunteered the others to help with a search and rescue kind of camp at the college. They were volunteering to be victims. On the second day, a little while after Dax dropped them off, Addison sent me this picture and told me that she had twisted her ankle on the steps on the way into the building.

Scared me to death!!

It wasn't true. They had a professional costume makeup artist there and it was part of her trauma for the camp. Little Turkey!! After she twisted her ankle which caused her to injure her knee and spent most of the school year in physical therapy that scared me even more than it would have on it's own.

Over the weekend Addison had a pageant in Dallas. We headed out early Friday morning. Along the way I needed to stop and get gas and find some cold medicine. I pulled into a gas station in a small town right off the interstate. This was next door to the gas station.

Maybe they needed gas too? Or perhaps the Elvis impersonator that was performing at the gas station arrived in that. It was quite the interesting stop, that's for sure!

Abigail has become a huge fan of the Dallas Stars hockey team and took advantage of the trip up there. She has a friend that she met online that lives in Dallas so the two arranged to meet and take a tour of the American Airlines Center. It was a great tour. They took us all around the building, into the suites, into some of the clubs, and into the locker rooms. This thrilled the fans to no end.

After we left there, we had lunch with her friend (and her family) and then headed on to Denton where Addison's pageant was.

She didn't place in this pageant, but we all had a good time anyway. We headed home on Saturday night and got home pretty late. Dax was concerned about us getting home safely because he had had a terrible day. He tried to cut the grass (I use that term loosely) but the lawnmower broke down. Unfortunately it didn't break down until after it threw a huge rock through our bedroom window. Still waiting for the estimate to get that fixed.

Today we got our last child into braces. Don't think she'll be eating hamburgers and hot dogs for the 4th!

 

Hope everyone has a great weekend!!

Vacation Day 16

Sunday, June 30, 2013

We got up a little early this morning. We had scheduled horseback riding today and needed to make it to Hot Springs, AR (or there abouts) for our appointment. We had a great time and the kids were thrilled since they had been looking forward to it for the whole trip.

 

We really liked the fact that the paths wound through the woods and through a couple of creeks. There were fallen trees that we had to go around and branches to duck under and lots of hills. It made the ride so much more interesting.

After our ride we drove on to Texarkana where we met friends for dinner. It was so good to see them. I know our kids don't remember but they used to all play together.....almost every day!

We had intended to head on to Dallas for the night, but when we got back in the car we all decided that we were tired and it was just too late to drive anymore so we stayed found a place to stay for the night.

We got up the next morning and headed home. When we stopped to grab some lunch, though, it occurred to us that we were going to hit Austin right around 5:00 and traffic would be terrible. We couldn't decided what to do but finally decided to stop and see a movie to kill some time. I know, who does that on their way home from vacation?

We finally made it home and are so glad to be here!!

Vacation Day 15

Saturday  June 29, 2013

Our big goal today was to get to Lynchburg, TN. There we were touring the Jack Daniels Distillery.

Here's a free Jack on the Rocks...........

(sorry, their joke....not mine)

Anyway, the distillery tour is great! We really liked it and it's quite fascinating how it's developed and how they do it.

Afterwards, we walked into town and did a little shopping.

Wyatt stopped to play checkers. It's a hard game to win since the pieces don't move.

We also stopped in at the Moon Pie shop and bought a whole box, plus several individual flavors. I had no idea they had so many flavor options these days.

After we were done shopping, we got back on the road and headed for Memphis where we spent the night in a nice Hilton hotel. Dax and I sat down in the lobby bar for a little while and just watched people. It was both relaxing and entertaining.

Vacation Day 14

Friday   June 28, 2013


This morning our first order of business was a tour of Old Kentucky Chocolates. Time spent in a chocolate kitchen is a great start to the day. It was neat to see the machines and processes that they use, and to learn that they still do a whole lot of their work by hand. Then we shopped in the store and of course made a few purchases.

Once we were done there we headed on to Louisville, Kentucky. There we visited the Louisville Slugger Museum. It's a really nice place. There is a movie to be seen, a Lego room with some really impressive Lego art, and the factory. The factory tour was informative and a lot of fun. You get to see the whole process for bats they make and the different ways that they are made.

Just around the corner from the museum we saw this impressive car. If you can't tell, the whole thing is covered with red glass beads.

Before we left town we decided to walk down the to eat at Joe's Crab Shack which is on the water's edge. It makes for a lovely view and we had a great lunch.

We really didn't have anything else planned for the day so we decided to just get in the car and keep driving. I had planned to spend the night in Nashville, TN, but had trouble finding a hotel. We finally decided to stop in a small town on the state line. And since it was still early enough in the evening, the kids had plenty of time to enjoy the pool for awhile.

Oh, and I almost forgot our stop in Bowling Green, KY, at the Corvette Museum. The girls and I decided to wait in the car, but the boys went in to drool over the cars for a bit. They didn't have time to tour the museum, but there had been a big event going on that day so they got to sit in the newest model Corvette. They were in heaven!!

 

Vacation Day 13

Thursday  June 27, 2013


This morning we got up and got out of hotel Hell as quickly as possible. We went down the road and had breakfast then headed over to do a coal mine tour. I don't like closed in places like that so I waited while Dax and the kids did the tour. They seemed to have liked it alright.

As we were heading out of town, Dax found a place where we could pan for gems so we stopped and did that. It was really hard to find because you drive down what looks like someone's driveway. Then you get to a metal building where business is going on. You kind of drive through their parking lot and around the building and find another driveway from there. Then you finally get to a gate that you have to open and close (horses on the property) and the panning place is in an old shed in front of this guy's house. Of course there were no signs up anywhere to let us know we were on the right track. It's a wonder we actually ever found it.

Anyway, it was fun but we didn't find any gems......just some pretty rocks, I guess.

After we left there we were back on the road to Lexington, KY, where we're spending the night. What a difference a day makes!! Tonight we're staying in the Crowne Plaza which is a far cry from what we stayed in last night. Our room tonight is about three times the size of the one we were in last night and it's far, far cleaner.

Vacation Day 12

Wednesday   June 26, 2013

We got up this morning and headed for West Virginia. There were some things that I had thought we would do, but after looking more closely Dax and I decided that it probably wasn't what I had originally thought it was. So that kind of left us with a day of just driving.

On the way into Gettysburg we had seen a sign for Mr. Ed's Elephant Museum and Candy Emporium so we headed there first. I had been able to get some coupons for free fudge online as well so we hit the jackpot! It was a quirky little place but the people were nice. I even got some free day lily plants while I was there because they were thinning the beds.

Here's a couple of the nuts I saw:

After we all bought some candy and fudge we got back on the road and out of the blue, Dax decided that we should go see the battle field in Antietam. So we did.

We watched a short film about the area and the battle and then did the car tour of the battle grounds. Well, during the film they mentioned Harper's Ferry and the battle there so guess where we headed next?

We had a little trouble finding the area because the visitor's center is quite a ways from it. And it has a parking area separate from the tour destination and the visitor's center. You park and get on a bus that takes you to the Harper's Ferry Historic District and drops you off.

It looked like a really neat little area, but we only got to see a little bit of it because they closed everything down at 5:00. So we walked down to the river to look around and then headed back to wait for the bus to make it's next round to the parking lot.

Since it was already late in the day and we still had a very long drive ahead of us we decided it was time to get serious and hit the road.

We spent the night in Beckley, WV, in what it probably the nastiest motel I have ever been in. It was surface clean (the parking lot was clean and at first glance the room looked clean) but deep down it was dirty and nasty. The only plus was that the towels did smell of bleach when I went to take a shower. We probably would have gone somewhere else for the night except it was already very late and we didn't see anything else that looked any better. Ugh!! But, it builds character, right?

Vacation Day 11

Tuesday June 25, 2013

We had a little bit of a hectic start to the morning. When I got up I called to arrange for a tour in Gettysburg but had to leave a message. The man doing the tours called back while the kids and I were still down at breakfast. As it turned out they only had room left on the morning tour and that was it for the whole day. We were not packed yet and were still a ways away so we had to put it into high gear. I called again when we were getting close to let them know that we were on our way and they were gracious enough to wait for us. We did a tour with the Historic Tour Company that is more geared towards kids so it tells the battle stories in a different way.

It was really interesting tour and pretty much hit on each battleground and gave us the backgrounds for what was going on as we drove all over the area. There some very pretty country in the area.

After the tour we decided to go ahead and spend the night in Gettysburg that night so that we could do some looking around town instead of having to get back on the road right away. It took some work but I finally found a hotel so we went to have lunch and do some shopping around town until the room was ready.

When we got back to the hotel I took the girls to the pool while Dax and Wyatt went to get tickets for a ghost tour that night. Then we all just relaxed a little.

Later Dax, Wyatt, and Abigail left to go do the ghost tour (They said the tour guide never mentioned ghosts, spirits, or anything of the sort. Very disappointing.) and I stayed with Addison and Kirsten. The girls decided to go ahead and get their showers out of the way while the others were gone. Kirsten went first. Then, when Addison got out of the shower she asked Kirsten if she thought the soap made her face feel slimy when she washed it. Kirsten told her that she had used her body wash and that the soap had been in the shower when she got in.......the maid must have missed it when she had cleaned the room last. Addison FLIPPED OUT! She was going on about how she had washed her face with a stranger's used soap. It was hysterical!! When the others got back and she told them about it Wyatt told her that some man had probably used it to wash his butt. You gotta' love brothers.

Dax and I decided to go to a pub in town before we stopped to get dinner, but when we walked out of the hotel the wind was blowing like crazy and alarms were going off in town. It was crazy! We went back to our room and waited for about 30 minutes and all the activity had passed so we started over again. The pub had closed already (it was only like 9:00) so we stopped at another place in town, had a drink together, then grabbed some dinner and headed back in for the night.

It was another busy day and we were once again a tired bunch.

Vacation Day 10

Monday  June 24, 2013

What a day it was!! We started the day by going to Hershey Chocolate World. Heaven!!!

They have several different things to do there. We took their Chocolate World tour which was very cute. And at the end of it, they give you a chocolate bar. What? Let's do that again!! (Which we did, but not right away.)

They also have a 4D movie that we watched. It was cute.

But the very best part was the chocolate making experience where you get to create your own chocolate bar. You choose the base, any add ins, and sprinkles on top. Then while the bar cools you get to design the wrapper for it and it all gets put together and placed in a silver tin. It was a lot of fun!!

 

After we finished at Chocolate World, we headed into Lancaster County to do a little bit of shopping and had lunch at Good & Plenty. It had been recommended to us by a client.

Once it was getting into the late afternoon/early evening we headed back over to Hershey and went to Hershey Park. It was perfect!! I guess since it was a Monday night there weren't many people there. We didn't have to wait in long lines to get on rides or anything. As a matter of fact, I think we only had to wait at all maybe once or twice. Mostly we just were able to walk right up and get on the ride. Dax and Wyatt rode every roller coaster in the park except for one. And they didn't ride it because it broke down while they were in line.

We stayed until the park closed and they kicked us out. We had a great day but boy were we all tuckered out by the end of it.

Vacation Day 9

Sunday June 23, 2013

This morning we got up and into the city to see Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell. Both are free to see, but you have to get a ticket and appointed time at Independence Hall. We got our tickets and had some time before the tour, so we decided to see the Liberty Bell first.

The line was rather long, but moved quickly. The building it's housed in has a lot of other items and information about the Liberty Bell also.

By the time we were done there, it was time to walk over for our tour of Independence Hall.

The tour was informative, but, unfortunately, they don't let you see much of the building. Really, just two rooms downstairs. That was a little disappointing.

One thing we found ironic is that we were there to see the birthplace and symbol of American freedom, but you have to go through security (where they search your bags and everything) to get into both places.

By the time we were done there we were all hungry and decided that since we were in Philadelphia we should probably have a Philly Cheese Steak. So, we walked a few blocks and bought sandwiches. Let me tell you, they are very proud of these sandwiches in Philly. Four sandwiches, a couple of fries, and drinks. $51.00!!! Holy Cow! The sandwiches were good, but they weren't $51.00 good.

After the sandwiches, we stopped next door and got some frozen yogurt before walking back to the car and getting back on the road.

But, once we were on the road and ready to head out of town, we remembered the Philadelphia Art Museum. We didn't go inside, but we couldn't resist a chance to 'go all Rocky'.

Trust me, we're all so tired that there was no running up those steps.

After this, we did make our way back to the car and headed to Harrisburg where we're spending the night. It's good to just take it easy a little.

Vacation Day 8

Saturday      June 22, 2013


Today we got up early, got the car loaded, and headed to Jamestown Settlement. I found Jamestown to be more interesting than Colonial Williamsburg. I guess it was really more of what I was expecting Colonial Williamsburg to be.

Anyway, in Jamestown Settlement it is set up with a port, and Indian village, and a fort where the settlers would live.

They have demonstrations of the cannons on the dock and it was almost time for the next one when we arrived so we headed to the ships first.

It's really amazing how small the ships actually are inside and how many people sailed on them each trip in order to come to this new world.

Once the demonstration was over, we made our way to the fort.

From the fort we headed into the Indian village. It's really amazing all of the stuff that was out and available for us to touch and look at. They had several of these skins hanging and tools beside them to try your hand at removing the hair. I guess they don't worry about people taking the tools because it's a deer hoof still attached to the leg bone and who wants that?

 

 

 

Once we finished up at Jamestown we made the drive over to York Victory Center. They also have it set up like it might have been at the time.  Although it's set up as the soldiers would have been during the battle. We stopped and watched a talk by the 'doctor' which would likely have little experience and limited medical equipment. It was quite interesting. And we hung around for another canon exhibition.

 

 

After we were finished with our tours, we got back in the car for the long drive to Philadelphia where we spent the night. We got in late and rather than drive around trying to find somewhere to eat we just had pizza delivered to the hotel. So, we ate dinner and called it a night.

Vacation Day 7

Friday    June 21, 2013

Today we spent the day in Colonial Williamsburg. It's a really big place with much to see. There's so much to see and so much information being shared with you that it all starts to mush together and it's hard to keep it straight after awhile.

I found it interesting that in the Governor's house weapons were kept on grand display to prove his power. The walls were covered with swords and firearms.

There were lots of houses, public buildings, and businesses to look around and they had people in them that wore period clothing and told you about what went on in that place and how it related to life in the colony in general. Like I said, a lot of information.

When I was in the gun maker's shop I notice this poor little girl peaking in the window....

(Addison)

 

There was so much to see and learn in Colonial Williamsburg that we didn't do anything else today.

 

Once we left there we just went and ate and called it a day early. Hit the pool when we got back to the hotel and hopefully just relax a little.

 

Vacation Day 6

Thursday  June 20, 2013


We slept in a little this morning since we're all exhausted and sore. I thought vacations were supposed to be relaxing!

I had planned some battleground tours east of Roanoke today but we decided that since we were this close, we would drive up to Charlottesville and tour Thomas Jefferson's home Monticello.

It's an impressive house and the grounds are equally as beautiful. The tour of the house was very interesting and we learned a lot.

They had several things set up for the kids (or adults) to do like writing using a quill pen and and ink well and a few games that they might have used from the period that Jefferson lived.

We spent quite a bit of time at Monticello so when we left it was time to make the drive to Williamsburg, VA. There was a lot of driving today.

When we got all settled in at the hotel the kids headed to the pool and I used the guest laundry to wash some clothes. I washed two loads of clothes only to find that neither one of the dryers was working. I found out where the nearest laundry mat was and Dax and I raced over there. We had barely enough time to get the clothes dry before they were closing. Seriously, the woman locked the doors behind us.

Tomorrow we'll get up and see what Colonial Williamsburg is like.