Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Life's little adventures. . .

Our A/C went out just after fireworks on the 4th of July and we had to check into a hotel around 11:30pm. Our local Residence Inn had 2 nights available, but were scheduled to have no vacancies for Monday night, so we had to pack our bags and move to another hotel for night #3 of our adventure. Stetson spent most of his time at the PetsMart PetsHotel. (Karlon says blogging should be more interactive, so you can watch their video tour here)
. . .And I have to say that the staff really does treat the dogs with genuine kindness and I always feel at ease knowing that Stetson is happy and well cared-for.

(Incidentally, he and we were camped out in the same parking lot for the first two nights as Petsmart and Residence Inn are in the same shopping center).

. . .My mom came through town on her way back from visiting her mom in Brenham and we had lunch at Macaroni Grill and visited for a long time, which was a wonderful diversion. The food took *forever* to get to the table, but we barely noticed since we were having so much fun. They were supposed to comp some of the meal, but forgot, and as I didn't make a point to remind anyone of it, the manager presented us a $15 gift card and gave the kids free ice cream for dessert. Not a bad deal when we were having lots of fun visiting anyway.

Brandon got sick halfway through day 2 and was listless and nauseous. We now think he was just overtired from two very late nights and poor sleeping conditions ~ as he woke up this morning in fine form and ready to partake of his complimentary breakfast downstairs.

Very fortunately, the a/c guy came yesterday afternoon and replaced the broken "starter capacitor" for $189 including service call. My dad happened to roll through town just after the A/C was fixed. . . He and I went to dinner at Red Lobster, our favorite place to go when he comes to town ~ where he took full advantage of his cranky senior-citizenship and told the waitress that he didn't care for the fact that they didn't serve Diet Dr. Pepper. . . and no, he didn't want lemonade when he could make it out of water, lemons and packaged sugar at the table for free. When we got back, all of us put our heads together and decided that the house still wasn't cool enough to sleep in, and we would go back to the hotel and check out in the morning. Dad and Karlon each had a bedroom to themselves. . . Ashley and Jonathan took the fold-out couch in the living room, Brandon slept on the floor using the large uni-cushion from the couch for a bed and I slept on the aerobed we smuggled in from home. It would have been the most comfortable night's sleep of the whole ordeal for me, except. . .
. . .Karlon woke up around 1:30 with what we first thought was a kidney stone, but turned out to be a huge knot of a charley-horse in his back. I massaged the heck out of it for about and hour and we finally went back to bed 2:30 or 3am.

Dad took the kids down for breakfast this morning while Karlon and I slept-in and he said it was an experience to remember. Within 20 seconds of each other, Brandon dropped a heaping plateful of scrambled eggs on the floor and Ashley dropped a waffle and syrup face-down on the carpet. . . and before they left, all three kids figured out how to get the sticky syrup off their hands by using the ice that was being used to chill the boxed beverages. Dad said he had forgotten how much "fun" it was to take the three of them on an outing.

But THANKFULLY, we're back home now and everything is almost back to normal. Stetson's grooming appointment is this afternoon and as soon as he's finished, we'll pick him up and be back once again to status-quo, and the (comparitavely) lazy days of summer.

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