I'm always a week Behind

Last week we accompanied Ken on a few business trips. The 1st one was to Ft. Worth for 2 nights. It was nice to get away and have some family time. Our hotel room was huge. Embassy Suites of course!

Ft. Worth wasn't terribly exciting. Not bad considering we were tagging along on a business trip. But otherwise I thought it was too large to be a charming sleepy town, and yet too small to be an exciting city. It felt like we were in the city because we were downtown had to valet park our car. Also they have historic signs pointing to all these attractions downtown.

The 1st day I ended up parking the car, getting the girls situated in their stroller, we pause for a quick run into the hotel for a bathroom stop, then come back out and ask the valet guy which way to The Stockyards, thinking we will walk there since we see all these sign pointing the direction to go. He looks at me and laughs and says it's 5 miles down 3 different streets. Yeah, that was fun! So we had to wait to get our car from the valet and then I drove to the Stockyards. We barely made it in time for the "historic cattle drive". Which meant a 5 minute, 1 block long, parade of 12 Texas Longhorns. I've seen better from "The Sackett's" (A plus is that going to Ft. Worth has made me want to watch that movie) Ft. Worth sure is proud of their cowboy heritage but they don't have anything on the Spanish Fork Rodeo.

Then we went to the Stock Yard Museum. That was a bust, I donated 5 dollars (kids were free) and that bought me all of 5 minutes in the museum (that was really like an antique store) I need signs to read telling me why a display shelf full of rocks is important. Rose had a major meltdown and we booked it out of there as fast as we could. Not wanting our entire day to be lame so we walked across the street to the Cowboy Museum. We got all excited and I was talking about Jesse James and Wyatt Earp to the boys. Ummmmmm Yeah, so that museum turned out to be more about modern cowboys who win Rodeo Trophies. There was rows of booths for all the Hall of Fame Cowboys. Although many of them had movie clips showing them hog-tieing??? (my fav roomate from UT can correct me) and bucking bulls, so that was exciting for the boys. They also had various wagons, and then a classic car (huh?), so that was slightly more fun. Driving around the town was fun for the boys, they liked all the cow statues and drawings on the buildings. They said that Grandpa T. would probably like to shop at alot of the stores.

As a side note, remember me getting eye drops for Ginger in Paris for pink eye for 6 Euros ($9). Nathan woke-up Monday with a lovely crusted over eye. It took me 4 hours talking to the pediatricians office and the pharmacy to get the prescription. Then I realized I didn't have my insurance card and had to pay the full price ($89) for the same bottle of eye drops! Arghh

The 2nd day went much better, we went to the Ft. Worth Zoo. I can see why it is one of the top 5 in the nation. It's very shaded so the heat wasn't a big problem and it wasn't crowded, Rose was able to walk all around which made her very happy. The animals were very close and they looked happy. We picked up Ken after the Zoo Trip and drove home.

Then bright and early (4:30 am) we drove to San Antonio to accompany Ken on another work trip. By the time we got to San Antonio I was thinking this is such a bad idea, I'm so tired. But it ended up being the best day of the week! We dropped Ken off to meet his work guys, then I sat in the parking lot for 40 minutes getting Rose and Ginger fed and ready for the day. Then I took the kids to McDonald's for breakfast. We stayed there for 90 minutes, it was pretty relaxing. Then we went to the San Antonio Temple Grounds and Distribution Center. Rose was so reverent, that's saying alot because we were there for over an hour as I got Nathan's baptism scriptures engraved (1 month to go exactly today!)

After that we went to the Witte Museum. I would have to say this is San Antonio's hidden GEM! It was amazing, we spent 5 hours there an only saw half of the museum. They are doing a Leonardo DaVinci exhibit until September. You have to go if you are nearby. It's all hands on, with examples of his inventions. My kids loved it. And even Rose got in on the action. I don't know how to classify this place, they also seem to have a Natural History part to the museum, a separate Children's Museum, a Texas history part, you just have to check it out! The only negative is that there isn't an on-site cafe or anything like that. And I wasn't about to ruin our fun museum trip by hauling Rose and Ginger to the car looking for someplace to eat only to have them fall asleep and be grumpy when we take them out of the car to go back inside. Since we were starving, and every time we watched a movie clip Rose asked for Popcorn. She really did, she said "Mommy, I want popcorn!" like 20 times. We found a vending machine. As luck would have it I only had $1 and another $1 in change. Darin was our hero, he had $2 in his pockets. So we bought as many munchies as we could. Then Darin saw that the soda vending machine said it took $5, but it wouldn't take any of our 3 different $5 bills. Which was too bad because I could taste the refreshing tingling feeling of Orange Fanta running down my throat when I heard that it took $5 bills.

You've got to love a place that entertains your 2 year old and let's your boys do this...