Dallas Weekend Adventure

Okay, here's a long story about our short weekend last week.

During the summers of 2003 and 2004, Adam took swimming lessons at the Oakley Pool in Cincinnati with two friends, Peter and Ross Lohrisch, who lived in our neighborhood. At the pool we met and became good friends with two other families, the Sellas and the Russells. When we moved away from Cincinnati, one of the things we really missed (in addition to Graeter's ice cream) was hanging out at the Oakley Pool with these friends. Last summer, the Lohrisch's also moved to Texas and bought a home in Plano. Maryann called me a couple months ago to let me know that John Russell was coming to Dallas in April to guest conduct the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. John, better known to us as "Jack and Alma's dad," was the associate conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra while we lived in Cincinnati. So we made plans to travel to Dallas last weekend to visit my brother, Adam, and his family, to play with the Lohrisch's, and to see John conduct the Dallas Symphony Orchestra concert with the Von Trapp Children, great-grandkids of the real Maria and Captain Von Trapp of "Sound of Music" fame.

Last Friday we planned to leave for Dallas as soon as Jeff and the boys got home from school so we could get to the cousins' house around bedtime. I ran around all day like a chicken with it's head cut off, trying to get all my errands done and get packed and ready to go. I almost made it, but best-laid plans failed again. We got a late start and didn't get to Dallas until about 10 p.m.

Saturday we drove up to Plano and spent several pleasant hours visiting, eating lunch, and swimming with John and the Lohrisch's. Three-year-old Jared provided the first excitement of the day by falling into the pool. Jeff had brought his swimming trunks but hadn't yet changed into them, so when he went in after Jared he soaked his wallet and clothes. Jared was fine, but scared. I'm afraid it's going to be a challenge to get him anywhere near a swimming pool anytime soon.

The second incident of the day occurred as we left Lohrisch's to go back to Dallas. The back tire on the driver's side of our van was completely flat. It took five men and at least a half an hour to figure out how to release the donut from underneath the van and get it mounted. Not wanting to drive too far on the donut, or to have to deal with fixing the tire on Sunday before we drove home, we pulled into a tire store five minutes before they closed Saturday evening. Fifteen minutes and eight dollars later we were on our way again. We made it back to Adam's and Paula's house with about an hour-and-a-half to eat and change before leaving for the concert.

The plan was to take Adam and Ryan with us and leave the little boys with a babysitter that Paula had arranged. I thought I had prepped Adam and Ryan well for the concert by buying the DVD of the Sound of Music, which they enjoyed in the van on the way to Dallas on Friday. However, they were tired from the late night Friday night, playing hard in the pool, and getting pretty bad sunburns--I forgot to apply sunscreen. The third incident of the day was one of those ugly parent-child power struggles when they both threw a fit about wanting to stay home and play video games with the cousins instead of going to the concert. I had actually considered letting them stay home with the babysitter until they started throwing tantrums--especially over video games! Then we were in a situation where we couldn't give in. So we got them dressed and into the van against their will, and we were off into what is known as the Mixmaster--downtown Dallas freeways. We only got turned around once off the last exit and made it to the Meyerson Symphony Center on time. The Meyerson was beautiful--can you see the Starship Enterprise in the lights on the ceiling?! The Von Trapp Children had amazing voices for teenagers, and John was fantastic--fun and energetic as usual. Adam and Ryan settled down and enjoyed the concert, as I thought they would. It was great experience and we really appreciated the tickets John comped us.

After another late night, we enjoyed a relaxing Sunday morning with Adam and his family. It's been so nice to live relatively close to them and get to spend time with each other fairly often. Our boys love playing with their cousins. Family is the best! We went to sacrament meeting with them in the afternoon, then headed home, again hoping to make it by bedtime. Our final excitement of the weekend happened when we stopped for gas in Sweetwater, TX, about 75 miles from home. We noticed that the tire we had gone to so much trouble to repair on Saturday was flat again. Grrrr. And it was pouring down rain. Jeff had no desire to put the donut on in his Sunday clothes in the rain. And he didn't feel good about driving home on the donut in the rain and in the dark either. Fortunately we were in a town big enough to have a truck stop with a service area that was open on Sunday evening. Unfortunately they didn't have the right size tire for our van. Fortunately they were able to refer us to an auto parts store that, amazingly, was open until 8 p.m. on Sunday evening and did have the right size tire. I still can't believe that. Unfortunately, the auto parts store wouldn't mount the tire for us. Fortunately, the truck stop service area did mount the tire for us. We saw some awesome lightning on the last leg of the trip, making it home 7 1/2 hours after we left Dallas, again about 10 p.m. (It's normally a 4 1/2 to 5 hour drive.) I let the boys sleep in Monday morning and took them to school late. When the secretary asked why they were tardy, all I could say was "hard weekend." Hard, but fun. And we got six new counties. :-)