Our Crazy Week (and some of this week), Part Two

So after my sister’s visit we were on our way to Dallas to visit my family who had come into town to visit my Grandma, and so that Angie could attend a conference. It was a quick trip, but still a lot of fun.

It started out with taking an alternate way to Dallas, which was scenic and a lot less stressful than driving on I-35. Usually our trip to Dallas concludes with me having to peel my white knuckled fingers from the steering wheel after enduring 3-4 hours of maneuvering between semi trucks on lanes that looked like they were designed for bicycles. This was a much more relaxing ride because we got to see some of the prettier areas of Texas (coming from Utah this sounds like it would be impossible, but there are actually some really pretty areas!) and we got to drive through some strange small towns. They weren’t “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” strange… it was more like “giant Billy the kid statues” strange. On a side note, you all might be interested to know that Billy the Kid day will be April 7th. Besides the giant Billy the Kid statue, and the huge banners announcing the annual Billy the Kid Festival, the strangest thing to me was that each small town seemed to have a Dairy Queen… I bet on our drive we passed at least 7 different ones. I don’t think I have ever seen a Dairy Queen in Austin, but each one of these small towns had one. So of course, I didn’t feel like our trip was complete without stopping at one and getting a blizzard. We also stopped in Hico, which is pronounced Hi-co (we were pronouncing it Hick-o, which is kind of degrading, but our subconscious put Texas and small town together… I guess the first thing we thought was Hick). Anyway, we stopped in Hico Texas where we snapped this picture:



Once we arrived in Dallas we took it easy, I played golf with my dad and Grandpa, while Madelyn went shopping with Angie. Madelyn swears that she went into the nicest Ross Dress For Less she had ever been to, she told me that she could have slept there. I immediately was given the image of what Hell would be like: living in a Ross Dress for Less. Once we were done with golfing we headed to the Dallas science museum (creatively called, “The Science Place”) where we saw one of the coolest exhibits we have ever seen. The exhibit is called Body Worlds, and it’s basically a bunch of cadavers all taken apart in different ways. It sounds a lot grosser than it actually was. It was incredible to see how our bodies are put together. They put the cadavers through a process called plastenation, so that they remain in specific poses... And most importantly, don’t smell. There were cadavers where they had taken out everything but nerves, or everything but veins. There were also small cases where you could look up-close at smokers lungs compared to healthy ones, and different organs that had suffered from various diseases. It was one of the coolest things I have ever seen. Check out their website, Body Worlds Site . We planned ahead and made sure to eat our Barbeque dinner BEFORE arriving to the Body Worlds exhibit.



On our last day I went on a quick golfing trip with Jackson and my dad. Believe it or not Jackson beat me (Imagine that…my dad was keeping score). He actually had some great shots... (although I think he enjoyed driving the cart more than anything.)



Once we were finished with golfing, Madelyn, Jackson, and I went to the nearest field to fly kites. A couple of weeks ago Madelyn and I were at our favorite weekend destination, H.E.B.(our grocery store), when I saw some kites for sale. I told Madelyn that we should go fly some kites when she informed me that she had never flown a kite before! So we picked out a Hello Kitty kite for Madelyn and I got a killer Ninja Turtle kite, and Dallas was the first opportunity we had to fly them. I made sure to get a picture of Madelyn’s first kite flying! Next week I think I might take the training wheels off her bike…



This week we had to catch up on all of the stuff we didn’t get done from our two weeks off. This weekend we saw Blades of Glory (funny, funny, movie—if you like Will Ferrell) and went shopping for some new work clothes for Madelyn (that was especially exciting for me), and we also went on a nice leisure bike ride around Town Lake. On our bike ride we passed a couple of pools where we saw people swimming. I guess it hadn’t dawned on me that its now nice enough out side to go swimming again (it was about 78 degrees today). Madelyn’s favorite part of the bike ride was seeing all of the puppies, and of course seeing a lady wearing a uni-tard straight out of 1988. Seriously, she was wearing a unitard.