San Antonio et.al.

It is hard to believe that the calendar has rolled over to a new year. There has been so much activity during the last quarter of 2010 that, at least for my family, we feel like we did as children when we would turn around over and over until we could barely stand up, much less walk – happy, but quite dizzy.


Brittany and Joshua leave to go back to Hot Springs today. We had a very good visit with Joshua during his time here – Brittany, not so much. What time she did spend with us was good; it just was not much time. Joshua and I had many hours to talk as we drove from Amarillo to San Antonio, San Antonio to Chappell hill, Chappell Hill to Rogers, and Rogers to Amarillo – 1140 miles, right at twenty hours in the car.

The morning we left for San Antonio it was 9 degrees in Amarillo. When we got to San Antonio that afternoon it was 72 degrees; quite a difference in less that five hundred miles. The whole time we were gone Mama was recovering strength in her back as she developed a pretty good cold from our trip to Palo Duro Canyon. The air temperature that day was 42 degrees but we were constantly in a forty mile per hour wind. It affected everyone, but Mama seems to have gotten the worst of it.

On our travels we spent one night with Mom and Dad in Chappell Hill. We got in there about 11:30 p.m. We went to church with them on Sunday morning. The marquee said “Church of God” but it would have been more honest for it to say “Pentecostal” or ‘Charismatic”. We enjoyed our time with them, but we spent the entire service looking for the Gospel and were disappointed not to find it.

At lunch we were pleasantly surprised to find Sarah and Fabian and the kids were at the restaurant waiting on us and after lunch she talked Mom and Dad into letting us spent Sunday night with them. Joshua, Chase and Seth had a great time with Josef and April. We adults talked for several hours and went to bed much earlier than the kids. Sarah and Fabian had to go to work the following day and I had to drive my crew home.

Sarah said she heard them going to bed around 1 a.m. When I waked the boys the following morning, I could tell they had not had much sleep. The drive home verified it as they caught up.

All in all it was a good trip. We saw a wedding in which Joshua participated as a groomsman, toured the River Walk with Seth and Chase and saw the Alamo. We visited with family, shared a birthday gift with Dad, drove over 1100 miles and never left the state of Texas.

Today it is back to the grind. I am back at work. Victoria and Maggie go back to work. Chase goes back to school and Seth begins his training to complete his GED. Mama is going to go with Seth this morning to see what she can do to help him through this training, so with Seth and Chase, she will be pretty busy as she still tries to recover.

For now our house is quiet, not empty, just quiet. That will take some getting used to.