March 29, 2004

Texas Tour 2004


Wednesday night we left church at 7:00 p.m. and drove to the airport to catch our flight to Austin. We arrived in Austin a little after 11:00 p.m., and took the shuttle to our hotel. While I was eating breakfast, Patrick to the shuttle back to the airport to rent a car - a Chevy Malibu "Classic." This is the GM code word for "crappy." The Malibu has recently been redesigned, and apparently they had a few of the old design leftover and slapped "Classic" on them. This car has ONE cupholder in the front. My Toyota truck seats two and has THREE cupholders. It feels like you can't see over the dash, and the height of the seat is not adjustable. The driver's side window sounded like it had a cat trapped in it. I wouldn't normally digress on a subject as boring as a rental car, but we drove nearly 800 miles in the car over the weekend, so I became very familiar with it.

We had some time to kill Thursday morning, and somehow we ended up at Fry's. This is a must stop for the Watts family when west of the Mississippi. We met Jason and Erin at Buffet Palace, which is just fantastic, but I must say is a little better at dinner.

After lunch, we went to see Giles and Jennifer, and their preparations for the birth of their daughter. Jennifer wasn't due until the end of April, but right now is in the hospital and will deliver on Saturday at the latest (see Giles' blog for updates).

From there we headed on to Dallas, where Mom and Allison were finishing up their open house at their school. We went out to eat and back to the house. On Friday morning, we went to Ft. Worth to see Patrick's Uncle Jim. We had a good visit and got to see some great pictures of Patrick's paternal grandparents and other relatives.

Friday afternoon, we ran errands to prepare for the shower. Everyone came over for dinner - John and Michelle, Michelle's mom, Michelle's sister, and Allison.

Saturday - THE BABY SHOWER. We spent all morning gettng ready for the big event. Michelle's mother, Diane, made some great cream cheese mints, and we had a cake that matched the decorations. Michelle got lots of great stuff - including a Sit 'n Stroll for all those trips on Southwest.

That evening we went over to John and Michelle's house and helped put some of her loot together, and played with Jedi, their four-legged child.

We left Sunday morning and headed south towards Austin. We stopped by the hospital to see Jennifer (sorry we woke you up, Jen!), and then we went to the Texas State History Museum. This is a great place, even if you're not from Texas. It's very interactive and interesting. I wish we had had more time there. We also saw the new Nascar in 3-D Imax movie there. It was awesome. It was better than Cats. We had to get to the airport to catch our 5:50 flight to Nashville. We're pretty tired, but it was a great trip!

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