Summer Awesomeness

Thats right, eating lunch in front of the tv!!!

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ER Fun!

Lets face it, "child safe" lids on medicines are a joke. Lucy drove this point home on Monday, when I found her playing with the blue horse pills, otherwise known as my generic tylenol pm. Yeah! That phone call to poison control is always the hardest. No matter how you phrase it, you, the parent, always ends up sounding like an incompetent boob! It is a walk of shame. Nevertheless, I made the call and was told to hightail it to the ER. Long story short one chocolate milk/charcoal concoction, a 4 four respite in a nice ER room with a comfy bed, and one bloodtest later we were cleared to leave. She was fine, but I am glad that we erred on the safe side. Now all thats left is to do some serious Lucy proofing!!

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New Orleans

We spent the night in New Orleans. We grabbed a late dinner at a place called Mother's, and stuffed ourselves on po' boys, red beans & rice, and jambalaya! It was excellent! Next morning, we got out early & checked out the French Quarter. It was beautiful! It was so neat to see all the old European buildings, and I wish we had had more time to meander & explore all those little streets. Jackson Square was gorgeous, and St. Louis Cathedral was magnificent. We grabbed beignets & cafe au lait at Cafe Du Monde, and it was such a fun treat!! We hopped back into the car, and drove through the Garden District before getting back onto the road. Those homes were jaw dropping. I can't even imagine what it would be like to live there!
I had never been to New Orleans before this quick stop, and I am so glad that we were able to spend a few hours checking NO out. I hope to go back, so I can really take my time!!

Battleship Memorial Park

Driving home from Florida we managed to do some sight seeing!
First stop, Battleship Memorial Park in Mobile, Ala. The U.S.S. Alabama is parked here, and so is the USS Drum (a submarine). We had a great time exploring all the nooks & crannies of the Alabama. Some quick facts: the USS ALABAMA measures 680 feet from stem to stern, half as long as the Empire State Building is tall. Armed with nine, 16-inch guns in three turrets and 20, 5-inch, .38-caliber guns in 10 twin mounts, her main batteries could fire shells as heavy as a small car accurately for a distance of more than 20 miles. She saw 37 months of active duty during WWII & earned 9 Battle Stars. The ship is an amazing feat of human engineering. It was sad to see it so eerily empty, and I really wished I could have been a fly on the wall & seen her in action with her sailors. Really spectacular.


They also had a variety of planes parked in a hanger. Jake was super excited that they had a Black Bird!

Summer Reading!

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Then we went to the Beach!!!!

Living in Texas it is easy to forget how nice real ocean beaches are. The water was clean & cool, the beach was clean of trash & tarry substances, the water smelled good, and there were no oil rigs in sight. It was a refreshing change, and it was awesome!

Lucy did not like the water, but she loved the sand!

We can say, "We were there."

Jacob & I really wanted to take the kids to see NASA launch the final shuttle. At first it seemed like a crazy pipe dream, but the more we talked about it the more it became a reality. With Jacob starting a new job his time off was limited, so the drive to Florida was going to be a marathon drive. The kids & I packed up the car, and when Jacob came home from work we set out. Luckily I had packed Jake a Rock Star, and that is all it took to enable him to drive until 5 am!! Bonus! I took over the rest of the drive, and we made it to Cape Canaveral with plenty of time to tour Kennedy Space Center & see the shuttle on the pad.
It was breathe taking to see the structures, and support that went into getting the shuttle ready for launch. The VAB (vehicle assembly building) is the largest one story building in the world!! It equals 3.75 Empire State buildings! We also got to take a look at the crawler (the machine that transports the shuttle from the VAB to the launch pad). This thing was massive!!! The top deck was the size of a baseball infield, and its top speed was 1.6km. I mean it was huge! We got to see the backside of the shuttle on the launch pad, so we saw the external tank & boosters peeking out. Exhausted, and hungry we headed to our hotel.
Next morning we set out hoping that they would launch. There was only a 30% chance that the mission would be a go. We were not as close as we would have liked to have been, but people staked those places out as early as 12 am. But we did get a great spot on a bridge. It was an awesome feeling to be surrounded by all the other people, waiting for this human achievement to blast off into space. The anticipation was palatable, and when NASA announced the mission was a "go" the excitement mounted. We all counted down, and then there was a small delay, and then it took off. I tried to take a picture, but I was so engrossed in watching that only 1 picture was taken. It was truly awe inspiring to see the blast of fire, and the shuttle hurtling through the sky.
I am not sure if the boys will remember all the details, but I will never forget that we made it to the last US shuttle launch. It was definitely a "Bucket List" moment, and I am so glad we took a chance and drove to Florida.

The VAB & crawler

Diagram of what we were seeing.

Picture of what the shuttle would have looked like from the front angle.

Ethan & Rhys got to leave a message for the Atlantis astronauts.

I wish this would have been a better picture, but sometimes in life actually watching an event takes precedence over documenting it. And this was definitely one of those times!