Spring Break

WARNING: LONG and LOTS of PICTURES!!!!

Ok, now I finally have time to sit down and record the details of our fun trip. We left on Sunday, the 15th for Dallas via plane. It was to be Anna's first plane ride, so I of course kept the camera handy. She was a little nervous, but did fine. Here is a picture of her waiting for the plane: (watching the Smurfs in a little kiddie area...Thank you Lubbock!)

And now another picture of her waiting to take off:

She was a little nervous and as we were leaving the ground she went "WOE, WOOOOE!" LOL! The other passengers around us were tickled by it. It was kind of cute and it wasn't too loud, just loud enough for a few rows of passengers to hear.

She asked me why her ears had to pop a few times, and we read a book of hers to distract and other than that, she watched out the window. It was a good flight and the landing was perfect into Dallas. She also went "WOE, WOOOE" on the landing and again tickled the passengers. It was a very good first flight for her and the flight attendant on the way out gave her a package of wings. YES, an entire package. (They are mostly still roaming the house somewhere too.)

Monday we went to the zoo. Anna's first trip to the Zoo. She had a great time and boy was she excited about it when we got there. She was flying off the zoo walls. LOL! It was VERY hot and humid on Monday, so I am glad we only went for half a day. She got to see everything she wanted except the lions. The lion exhibit was being repaired, so no lions. Exciting none-the-less and she loved it. She also couldn't believe how big the elephants really were. Now here's a few zoo pictures:

Tuesday was a little bit of shopping day and kill time. I got Anna some cute clothes for a dollar a piece at "Once Upon a Child." The one down from my sister is really good. We also got a bunch of books for school, which really weighed down my suitcase coming home. That was about it for the day as my sister had a root canal done Tuesday afternoon. OUCH!!

Wednesday we went shopping to Grapevine Mills mall. I absolutely love to shop at that mall. Their "Children's Place" is one of my favorite stores to shop for Anna. She has a bunch of their clothes, but they all look so good and wear so well. The best part is mostly they are cheap, usually under $3 an item!! You can't beat that for brand new clothes. I did splurge and buy Anna two super cute outfits at $7 a piece, but she looks so cute in them. I couldn't resist and my child needed the clothes. She wore one of them to church Sunday and got lots of compliments, so it was WELL worth it to me. Oh yeah, between the books and shopping, we filled our large suitcase to bring home with new stuff. :-) Glad I borrowed a second one for this trip. The girls also went on the carousel and Anna of course picked a black horse. My sister put Graciela on for her first ride, so here are a few pictures from that as well.

Anna loved the carousel and I am pretty sure Graciela did too.

Thursday we were to head home. Here's is where the real adventure began!! LOL!! Since we had an early flight out, we went ahead and went to the airport early enough to get checked through security and have some breakfast, which in turn would leave us about an hour to kill before our scheduled departure time. Airport arrival was about 7am. Not too bad. I was impressed. We got our luggage checked and got our tickets and proceeded through the mess called security screening and went to McDonald's for breakfast. Not too bad so far and all is well. After breakfast, we sit and play on the DS and I do crosswords. Nothing is ever said of our flight being delayed until after 9:30am. Our flight was supposed to leave at 9:25am, so I knew it was going to be late, but how late. At 9:30, we find out that there is zero visibility in Houston and our flight is going to Houston before coming to Dallas, so we will be delayed about 45 minutes. Okay, not so bad, so we just sit and color and I continue crosswords. About 15 minutes later they decided to go ahead and cancel the flight we should have been on. YES, CANCEL!!! AACK!! This isn't in the plans, but they plan to get us all on other planes, via standby throughout the day, so we are told to sit and wait. OK, sitting and waiting is easy when your old enough to not care, but my poor 7 years old was afraid we were never going home and that we had missed the plane and that was the end of it. Despite how many times I told her no. About 11am, they sent us all over to another gate to wait and see if we couldn't get on that plane via standby. When I got to that gate, they said that we would have to wait until 1pm at the earliest to even find out if we would make it. OK, so far from 7am to 11am is 4 hours in one airport for a very active 7 year old. UGH!! Starting to be a long wait, so we went to Chili's for lunch. I let Anna have french fries and tell her that if the wait is going to be more than an hour after lunch, that we will go by the Barbie she saw in the gift shop. A Southwest Authentic Barbie. UGH!! Lunch didn't take but about 45 minutes, so off we go to buy the very expensive Barbie, that has shoes that don't go on and her own rolling suitcase. Here's a picture:

About 45 minutes later I ask the lady at the counter if there are really any chances of us getting on the plane that about 75 other people are also waiting on and she says no, but that the next plane that was supposed to leave at 1:55pm, we could definitely get on it, but it too was delayed. She gave us new tickets for the 1:55pm plane and we make out way off the floor to the new gate. YES, we have been to three different gates now. At the new gate, there are a couple of pilots there by about 2pm, so I get the brilliant idea to ask if they would take a picture with Anna. Why not, we are still in a wait and see pattern. So, here is the said picture:

Steve (bald guy) and Danny, our actual pilots for our flight home from Dallas to Lubbock. They were both very nice and Steve told Anna that if she waited around when we got to Lubbock, that he would let her sit in the cockpit!! YES!! Of Course we will stick around!! You don't get that opportunity very often and we aren't flying again anytime soon. The flight home was uneventful. Anna did well and didn't "freak out" as she calls it. She was ready to be home and out of all airports, so it was a relatively easy flight. We left Dallas around 3:00pm ish (after being there since 7am-YES, almost 8 hours spent in an airport-it would have taken less time to drive home) and arrived home around 4:15pm. We did indeed get a picture from the cockpit once we returned to Lubbock!! It was great!

Anna had one more surprise when we returned home and that was a new pet bird. Here is a picture of that bird, who she named Tim.

Jeremy has all the details of the bird on his blog, so i will let you all read that if you want to. I guess that's it. You all are finally clued in to the details of my trip. Sorry so long and all, but I wanted to make sure it got posted. I hope you enjoyed and have a great week. We are back to school today, so it is time to get moving and ready. Take care and God bless.

Good Weekend

Well, I had a good weekend. Jeremy and I went to Amarillo over night on Saturday. Enough to get away, but close enough to not cost an arm and a leg. It is about 2 hours from here. Anyhow, we went on Saturday night after I got off of work and drove into Canyon first. I haven't been there since I graduated over 7 years ago. It has changed quite a bit over the years, but it still had many of the same small town features I liked. Where I used to get my car fixed is now a big Chevron and convenience store. Our favorite Chinese food place is still there. The apartment we lived in is still there and of course the University is still there. There of course were several changes as well. The University no longer is drivable (is that a word) straight through. They have added a nice center court type thing to the middle of the University. It was really nice looking. The apartment my sister lived in was painted green, it used to be brick red; the Dairy Queen is gone; the local small town Wal-mart has been located to another location and is now a Super Center and the Justice Center is now in a new location where the Wal-Mart used to be. I am sure there are more changes, but that all I caught on our drive through town.

We then went on to Amarillo. Amarillo has grown a bit as well. It has expanded further south, but still has a lot of the same things. We had dinner at the mall and walked through it, then chilled and watched a few movies. On Sunday morning we were awakened to the sound of someone knocking and trying to get in...."Housekeeping!" LOL! They came three more time before we left. We went to Chili's for lunch. It was good and it was also the first time that I was charged for switching Salsa to Ranch. Seriously, they charged me for it. I was a little appalled and thought it ridiculous to be charged for something because Salsa is probably more expensive to make. Anyhow, Jeremy wouldn't let me say anything. I wanted to though. We walked Wal-Mart before we left to come home. Yes, I know we can do that at home, but that wasn't the point. We also had ice cream when we got home before picking up Anna from her Grammy's. It was a fun get away to say the least. we are hoping to do more of these get aways and soon. It was fun and not that expensive. It was also refreshing, especially since we have never done this before.

Anyhow, my whole point of this was to say thank you to my husband who thought of the idea and footed the bill for this trip out of his over-time pay, which he originally had other plans for. Thank you honey for a fun trip. I enjoyed it.

Vacation Slide Show!!

Here are the pictures you all, okay, well some of you have been waiting for! I LOVE when Jeremy makes a slide show of all our pictures. Hope you enjoys them!!

========Vacation Part 1==========


Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Photo Printing - Photo Books
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=========Vacation Part 2=========


Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Photo Printing - Photo Books
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=========Vacation Part 3=========


Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Photo Printing - Photo Books
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Our Trip, Day Three, Build-A-Bear

On day three, of course we came home, but we also went to the mall, got to get our Disney fix somewhere!! Then we went to Build-A-Bear workshop as a surprise for Anna and let her build a new stuffed animal. These are the ones that we keep for her, along with a few specified others. She absolutely loves to make animals there. She got there and was really hoping to make a horse, but they do not have that right now, so she ended up making a pink cat. Here are some pictures of her making her new kitty.

Picking out just the right one:

A Pink Cat, Perfect:

Stuffing it with fluff:

Washing it:

Finding the right clothes:

Dressing it:

This is a hard task, Dad has to help dress the kitty:

Mom helps with the shoes:

At the checkout with our new princess, Princess Kitty:

The Build-A-Bear Promise:

We are done shopping:

Time to go home, doesn't she look happy:

We must have been bored on the way home, cause she slept:

As you can see we had a fun time. The trip was terrific and fun, we just wish it was longer. It is expensive to stay in a hotel for a few nights and pay for gas, food, drinks, etc while out though, so our trip was what it could be. We had a great time and we hope to something again next year, but our question is where do we go next year? Need a new location and a new venue for ALL of us. We want something fun for all of us and exciting, but not too expensive. Let me know your ideas for a cheap fun vacation for all. Stay tuned tomorrow for a posting of all the pictures in slide show from our trip. I have only posted a handful of them. Thanks for reading and God Bless.

Our Trip, Day Two, Six Flags

On day two, we went to Six Flags. It was so much fun. We got up extra early, due to the excitement for the day, of course. Here is what I came out of the shower to:

Can't you tell how excited she is? She was jumping from bed to bed in the hotel, and it never stopped. The girl jumped this way all day. She was so happy and giddy!!

Anyhow, we then went to breakfast and then on to Six Flags for the day. We waited in line for the parking gates to open. Here was our only view of Six Flags for about 20 minutes:

Next, we got our tickets and went through the gates, where we were warmly greeted by a whole slew of characters!! In all my time at the parks, I have NEVER seen that many character by the front gates and certainly not right at the gates. Here were a few fun pictures of the characters.

As you can see we all got in on the character fun. How could we not, it was so much fun!! We did share a lunch at the park, since you do have to eat at some time while at a park for 9 hours give or take.

We went on our share of rides, including plenty of water rides. Here are some pictures of the fun rides:

I can tell you after going on the Bobsled ride, Anna was terrified and said she would never, ever get on that ride again. After that, we had some convincing to do to get the girl on some more rides.

We did have a great time and after a full day of rides and family fun, we headed on to dinner at Steak and Shake. We love this restaurant and love the food and especially the milk shakes. It was good. Then, it was back to the hotel for a GOOD nights sleep.

Our Trip, Day One, Getting There

Well, as for our trip, we had a great time and YES, I am finally going to start posting about it for you!! YEAH!! We left on Sunday morning and drove for almost 6 hours to get there. It was a very uneventful drive there. We had good weather and good time driving. We stopped at the truck stop in Sweetwater for a bathroom break and basically drove on through and had a very late lunch at a Weatherford. We then made it on to the hotel, which we had trouble getting into, but finally figured it out and come to find out that the swimming pool we so wanted to swim in was broken and would basically be out of service until the morning we left. UGH!! There went some of our plans. We had dinner with my sister and the baby, who has gotten so big and coos really cute, then went back to the hotel and killed some time. Anna was a little disappointed about the pool still, but she was really excited about seeing her baby cousin. We had a lot of down time the first day, but having dinner with my sister and the baby was the best part of the day. Here are some pictures of day one:

Listening to her MP3 Player:

Energy Windmills:

Movie Watching on Daddy's IPOD:

Funny Milk Truck Picture (That's our car in the reflection):

My Sister and the Cutey Pie Baby:

Graciella Talking:

Looking at her Mommy:

Anna's Favorite thing that day,

holding her baby cousin:

See, she did it more than once:

As you can see the highlight of the day was seeing the baby and my sister. She is a cute little girl and growing so fast. I feel like we are missing it all. Bring her to visit Tashia, so she knows who we are. Love you.

I will post day 2 of our trip tomorrow. Stay tuned for more fun. :-)