Whirlwind Trip

My students and I left Hereford dark and early Sunday morning at 6:00 a.m. We go to Dallas around noon and had to deal with lovely traffic delays due to construction. We stopped for lunch and then headed to Six Flags. Yes, I finally got another chance to ride some coasters. It was heavenly! It was a very nice day at the park. It was not very hot at all as it was very overcast. But it wasn't too cool either. The wait time for rides was around 15-20 minutes. We were able to ride 4 coasters in a little over 2 hours. I did some shopping and got a Marvin the Marvin bobble head. I now have a season pass so that I can visit other parks (hopefully) this summer. I gave my students "coaster lessons" at each coaster. I was amazed at the fact that they were completely worn out and they had to keep up with me. I guess just being at a park gives me an extra boost of energy.

We left Arlington around 5:00 and headed towards Austin. The drive was uneventful and amazingly I was able to get to the hotel easily. We checked in and I just had to be upgraded to a King room because there were no more queens available. Darn. The hotel was very nice. We then headed out to eat. We tried to go to Chili's but they were closing at 8:45 which is weird. We then went to Fuddruckers and got burgers. They also closed quite early. We came back to the hotel and I was able to soak in a hot bath which was quite lovely. I finished the book I was reading and went to bed around 10:30. The next morning I had a quick breakfast at the hotel. (I love the free breakfasts.) It was really quite good. They had eggs, potatoes, ham, sausage, biscuits and gravy along with pastries, cereal, yogurt etc. I had potatoes and sausage with some juice. We left around 7:45 to go to the competition. Amazingly, I found it with no problems. We registered and my students drew their speaker numbers which were 24 and 34. We had a long day of waiting as both students didn't speak until after lunch. We also found out that there was a hostage situation going on in a building just a few blocks from the place where we were. I started another book and read most of the day. They provided lunch - sandwiches from a local deli. My students did their speeches and then we waited for the awards. Neither of them placed in the top three, but they did get a $100 savings bond for making it to the state level.

We were out of there by 3:00 so we went back to the hotel so the kids could change. We went to a mall that was close by and hung out there for a couple of hours. (Mostly in the bookstore) Around 5:20 I heard from my friend Mary (the choir director at my church who was also in Austin at the time) and she was going to meet us for dinner. We headed to the restaurant (Pappasitos) and waited for her. She arrived and we enjoyed our meal and good conversation. When we left, the kids didn't want to just go back to the hotel and they wanted to try and find a movie theatre. I didn't want to just drive anywhere so I stayed on I-35 and there is not a movie theatre within 10 miles of our hotel in either direction. We played the alphabet game in the car while looking for a theatre (that we never found) so we just drove around the city for a while and then headed back to the hotel.

I took another bath (a luxury for me) and then got ready for bed. I watched a little t.v. but started to fall asleep by 10:30. I gave up and turned the t.v. off. I got up this morning around 7:30. I checked out around 8:30 and had breakfast again. We left Austin around 8:45. The kids fell asleep right away. Around 10:00, one of them was having a nightmare and yelled out waking everyone up. He said that he was dreaming about spiders and he hates them. It was funny. We stopped in Abilene for lunch around 12:30 and then got back on the road by 1:00. We got into Hereford around 5:30 and I made it home by 6:00.

My aunt called and she and my uncle are coming to stay this weekend. That means I have to clean my house. Oh well... I needed an excuse anyway. I caught up on blogs and then I called in dinner. I just finished a short while ago and now I'm going to take it easy for a while.