A couple weekends ago I had the opportunity to travel to Texas with Anthony & Aaron for a gymnastics meet there in Ft Worth.
Thanks to our 5:25am flight, we were all up at 3:30am. It is such a different experience flying with big kids... I could really get used to this, except that I hate flying now...I hate the whole TSA thing and you have to pay for crappy plane food that used to come with a long flight.
Our flight connected through Seattle and then finally we were really on the way to DFW. This was somewhere over WY or CO where the mountain peaks were poking up through the vast blanket of clouds.
We made it to Ft Worth! Got our sporty little rental car & stayed with my cousin Karen & family in their lovely home.
That night, Karen & family had organized a 5K in honor of her husband Nathan's 40th birthday...they had a racecourse all set up and a fine array of racing treats...a whole bunch of fun friends showed up to run the 5K. Anthony & Aaron ran it with them, which in hindsight was maybe not the best thing to do the night before a big meet, but oh well. They ran the whole thing & made it back in about 25 minutes! Not bad at all for never having run 3.1 miles straight before! Karen's kids both finished even faster--Ryan was the first one back in just 21-22 minutes--that's a 7 min mile!
Anyway...it was fun and a really cute idea for a 40th birthday party...I know someone else turning 40 this year (NOT me yet, thank goodness!), hmmmmmmmm....
We got a good night's sleep and were up bright and early again for the meet Sat morning.
It was at the Ft Worth Convention Center.
Blogger doesn't like my videos right now so no videos (I had already put some on FB anyway so it'd be redundant). I know you must be utterly devastated by that news.
The meet itself went really great. I must admit I was a little disappointed in the competition--meaning the other teams of boys--they weren't any tougher a crowd than my boys are used to competing with here...we were looking forward to a challenge.
Only 3 boys from our team were able to even go to this meet, and of course 2 of those boys belong to me! We were sad the rest of the team couldn't come (all different reasons--some were injured, financial and other conflicts too...there are 11 boys on the team ordinarily!) The other boy who came was one of their best buddies so we're so glad he was there!
Both boys performed exceptionally well--Anthony took 1st place of the level 6 boys aged 12+, Aaron was 3rd of the 10-11 year old boys, and their team was 2nd place!!!
You might appreciate the team's 2nd place win even more by understanding that the team score is always calculated by taking the top 3 scores on each event within the team (all ages together). As I mentioned, there were ONLY 3 boys here from our team so EVERY score counted!
Anthony thought I deserved a photo with the trophy. : ) Behind me are some of the OGA girls' team coaches and girls who came to cheer on the boys while they weren't competing themselves.
I didn't really get a good photo of the interior of the venue--there were something like 7 or 8 meets happening simultaneously within the convention center and the boys was just one tiny space of floor while there were girls competing in all the rest. It was crazy. It looks pretty empty here but it was so full of people and movement and NOISE earlier.
The convention center itself was so big and open. We felt very small walking down the hall.
Of course the star is made of cowboy hats.
After the meet, we headed back to Karen's where we changed & met up with them to spend the rest of the day. First they took us to check out the lot where their new house is being built. There isn't much to see there right now so we toured the 2 model homes, which both were pretty fun to see.
I loved this craft room in one of the houses. The corkboard on the wall was clever.
The 2nd house had even more creative decorating than the first.
We liked the movie room with all its comfy Lazy Boys. Too bad Zac wasn't with us or he might've insisted we settle in to watch all of Cars II.
This boy's room decorated in car stuff was pretty fun. The desk over there beside the traffic light is a work bench, ha!
And the baseball room was clever too with a diamond cut right into the rug...the scoreboard headboard...and our favorite was the locker closet.
Ok, I know it's not fair to judge this part of Texas at the end of January, especially comparing with our always green NW, but it was so not what I was expecting just speaking in general about the landscape of the Ft Worth area...it was fairly flat with some rolling hills here or there but all the grass was yellow (except for the grass at the model homes--the only green we saw the whole time there!) and of course the trees had no leaves... Anyway, it wasn't the prettiest place but I'm sure it is WAY prettier when there are leaves on the trees and with green grass (and on days when the sun is shining--it was so cold & cloudy the whole time we were there)!
I just took this picture because it was a fair representation of what we saw of Texas along with the tiny patch of green grass. : )
Our next stop was way fun and gave us a good taste of Texas: the Stockyards!
My other cousin Leslie joined us there with her 2 cute boys.
There we saw lots of cowboys...
And sat on saddled horses of all shapes and sizes:
And saw many Texas-sized souvenirs:
And a definite highlight was lining up to see the Longhorns come parading down the road.
(I do wish the videos were working just for this--Aaron filmed the whole procession (not long) and it makes me laugh at the end when Anthony blandly says, "That was it?" I assure you it was worth doing once in your life.)
Those are some long horns.
And a wittle baby with baby horns...
We walked through this candy store once and returned again after the cattle drive...this was a pretty fun store with almost any kind of candy you can think of from any era (from candy cigarettes to Texas-sized candy necklaces). I bought candy to take home to the little boys too.
Karen's cute daughter Cassidy
Then the boys did this Maze with Cassidy & Ryan--they were supposed to find each of the letters M, A, Z, & E & punch their cards at each one...and then they got a prize based on how quickly they finished. (Ryan & Cassidy must be getting some height genes from Nathan's side of the family...Ryan is 18 mos older than Anthony & Cassidy is just 6 mos older than Aaron...but taller than BOTH Anthony & Aaron!)
There was a great lookout place to spectate from above.
Helpful signs everywhere. Ha.
And finally they finished...it took them 13 minutes!
All that excitement had built up our appetites...so Leslie suggested we eat at a Mexican place called Joe T. Garcia's, which was quite the experience! There was already a line when we got there but amazingly our large party made it through in just 5-10 minutes...and then as we were led to our table, we passed through an incredible number of sprawling packed-full rooms...I've never seen anything like it. It truly must take up the entire city block, it's so big.
Our waiter was kind enough to get a table shot for me...our only pic with everybody! (Leslie's husband Brad was at home sick with a stomach bug, poor guy!)
And then they didn't even pass out menus...we had a choice of fajitas or enchiladas, beef or chicken (or both)...the boys ordered the kids' fajitas which were huge!
And I had enchiladas... Not the best I've ever had...but it was a fun place to go just for the experience alone.
Now this has to be seen to be believed...the line for this place is CRAZY! So I mentioned there was a line when we arrived--at that time the line was just out the door & down the stairs...as we left, the line was snaking down the street--I couldn't even fit it in my camera frame with the wide angle!
I was trying to get a pic of the cute little downtown area there but it ended up being more or less the interior of the car. Traffic was crazy around there...evidently the place to be on a Saturday night in Ft Worth!
The next morning we cleaned up, packed up, and made our way to the airport (with the help of Nathan's great directions...even our GPS was totally confused with all the construction going on all over there!) And finally we were on our way home again. Anthony got a lot of comments all along the way carrying around his team trophy.
Huge thanks to Karen & Nathan & kids and Leslie too!
It was so fun to visit and experience a little bit of Texas!
