On Thursday we packed up early and drove the whole rig to the Schlitterbahn. The parking attendant saw us coming and pointed us to an auxiliary lot where we could take up a whole row of spaces on the end of a row where we would be able to pull straight out at the end of the day. We had a great day at the park, enjoying the lazy river/wave pool combination the most. I think my expectations were too high for a waterpark. I thought the rides would be more exhilarating than they turned out to be. I think it must be impossible to recreate a rollercoaster feel with a water ride. Adelaide and I did wait the hour it took to get onto the Mega Blaster, which is the country's first water coaster and its highest rated water ride. It was fun and it felt cool to be shot uphill with jets of water, but I don't think it was worth the hour's wait. The kids were a little upset with me because I had to take a work call in the middle of the day. Fortunately, this was the first scheduled call for which I had to interrupt our fun since June 9th. Luckily it turned out to be a short call and the kids enjoyed funnel cakes while worked. We ended the day taking ride after ride on the Downhill Racer until they closed the park at 8:00. Before leaving, Jll took the girls into shower house to get the girls cleaned up. Adelaide fell in the shower, landing on her face without having the chance to break her fall. We walked back to the RV serenaded by the sound of Adelaide's quiet sobs.
Everyone quickly fell asleep in the RV as we drove to Marble Falls. We parked in the driveway of the Hatfields' home and got the kids tucked into their son Braden's room and on the floor of the guest room. Jll and I went to college with Brad and Kari Hatfield. Brad and I were fraternity brothers at Colorado State University and became roommates during our first year of law school at the University of Denver. Brad and Kari were married during our second year of law school and moved to Texas after graduation. Jll and I used to come down fairly regularly to play in the Crawfish Open golf tournament in Brad's hometown of Llano or to waterski on Lake LBJ and Lake Travis. I don't think we have visited Brad and Kari since either of us had kids. It had been way too long. After getting the kids to bed on Thursday, we had the chance to stay up talking with Brad and Kari. It seemed like we hadn't missed a beat and it was just like old times.
On Friday Brad and I got out early to play golf with a friend of his at the Horseshoe Bay Golf Resort - Apple Rock. I played like crap but it was still fun to play golf with Brad. Looking back at law school, I think we averaged about four or five rounds of golf a week. While my game improved dramatically, it had a very detrimental impact on my grades. While we played golf, Jll, Kari, and our kids visited and had a breakfast of donuts and kolaches. At about lunch time, we all met back up at Turtle Beach at the Horseshoe Bay Resort. We grabbed a lunch on the beach and headed to the Yacht Club Pool for an afternoon of swimming and throwing kids in the pool. As we neared the evening, we got cleaned up and headed to dinner at Cooper's Old Time Pit Bar B Que in Llano. We would frequently eat here during our past trips to visit the Hatfields because the food is amazing and it is a very unique experience. I can't think of any other restaurants that have loaves of white bread, Parkay spread, and jars of pickles sitting in the middle of the picnic tables in the dining hall. We lined up the kids to peer into the serving pit and pick out what delicious meats we would devour. The sausage, ribs, and sirloin were dipped into sauce and placed on a plastic tray that we took in to the folks working behind the counter. They weighed the meat, sliced it, wrapped it, and placed it in a tinfoil carrier. We ordered a few sides and checked out, which included us being issued our pieces of waxed butcher paper, which serve as the plates. We stuffed ourselves and yet found room for blueberry, apple, and peach cobblers for dessert. Another ritual in which we engaged was our post-Cooper's visit to Diane's house. Diane is Brad's mother and as with our previous visits, her driveway was filled with cars and her kitchen was filled with friends enjoying each other's company. It very much reminded me of visiting ten to fifteen years ago and some of the same people were still in the kitchen. It was great to see Diane, though we could only stay a short while. Just long enough, in fact, for Adelaide help make bananas foster and for me to try it. On our way out the kids spotted a few frogs and Dagny caught one. We looked at it for a little while and freed it before making the drive back to Marble Falls. A few of the kids fell asleep on the way back and we all hit the rack pretty early.
This morning we cleaned ourselves up and headed out for our last church service of the trip. We attended services this morning at the Fellowship Church - Grapevine Campus. If the interwebs are correct, this is the seventh largest congregation in the country with an average weekly attendance of 20,000. These folks have figured out how to welcome visitors. As we pulled into the parking lot, there were signs asking first time visitors to turn on their hazard lights. This is an indication to the parking attendants to direct visitors to the visitors parking section in the front of the lot. We were greeted at the car by two people who immediately welcomed us and engaged us in a conversation. As we headed to the church, we were handed off from the parking lot greeters to the front door greeters who again welcomed us and walked us to the visitors welcome kiosk, where we were handed off to the official visitor welcoming committee. These folks again welcomed us, asked our children if they would like a drink or a muffin (they said yes to both), asked us if our children would like to attend the children's services, explained where that was and how the check-in process worked, asked us to fill out a card with basic information about our family, provided us with a visitors bag which included a t-shirt, brochure, and CD containing a welcome message from the head pastor and a selection of the church's praise songs. The women from the visitor's kiosk then walked us down to the children's wing to assist us with checking in the children, then walked us back to the foyer where they walked us to the door of the sanctuary where we parted ways. Of all of the churches we've visited along the way, this one had the best visitor welcome wagon. The service was a little to much of a production for my liking, but it was a good sermon and the children very much enjoyed their time in the children's worship.
We drove to Allen, TX to meet David Wang and his children for a few frames of bowling at Splittsville, followed by dinner at Silver Thai Cuisine. We have known David since high school, as he attended Thomas Jefferson High School with Jll. We have not seen David for some time, and we have never met his children, so it was definitely nice to catch up. We talked about camping trips that David and I took with Laird Crandall and Daren Turner and the Super Dave videos we used to make. I had to pull up some Super Dave Osborne clips on YouTube so that Alastair could get an idea of what we were talking about.We made it back to the RV late again and everyone has turned in. We have enjoyed our time in Dallas and though we were not able to connect with my cousin Missy this time, we will be back. Tomorrow we will try to make it all the way to Sante Fe, so we will see how that goes.
Goodnight,
Dave
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