I'm spending the morning at Medical Center Hospital this morning with the love of my life.

Yesterday, I was in San Antonio for the Annual Texas Bandmasters Association (TBA) convention when my phone rang. It was the new manager of the Midland store letting me know he was taking my wife to the doctor. An hour later my phone rang again. This time it was my friend letting me know he was with my wife taking her to get a CAT scan for a possible stone in her kidney. So, I packed up the Scion, picked up my Abilene counterpart, and headed for Odessa.

I've never dealt with stones of any kind, but this experience with my wife and all those who helped her has convinced me that there can be very few pains worse.

So, here I am. We've been here since 6:00 a.m. I've watched her sleep. Prayed for her. Played on the computer and phone. And they say that sometime soon, we'll be going in for the super cool ultrasonic laser to break up the 1 x 4 cm stone that is sitting in her kidney causing the pain.

Guess it's a good time to put up the next installment of the summer vacations. After KK and I spent a weekend in San Antonio, my wife and son and I spent most of the next week in Dallas with our really good friends. This was a nice time of conversation, relaxing, and a lot of LAUGHING!

One morning, the guys all decided a tour of the new Cowboys Stadium in Arlington would be fun. So, we loaded up and took the thirty minute drive to the new stadium. It is a HUGE structure. Colossal comes to mind. But we were interested at how much activity was going on. There were tons of cars and people walking around. There were uniformed people directing traffic, and lots of concession type vehicles. We thought, "Wow, people are really excited about this new stadium!"

Jared was pretty stoked when this little Red Bull Mini-Cooper pulled up and two attractive young women asked him if he would be interested in a free Red Bull.

We also saw the Jerry Jones. He was a bigger man than I had pictured him to be. And the plastic surgery is going south pretty bad...

Turns out, we picked the day of American Idol auditions to try and tour Cowboys Stadium. So, they turned us away. We tried to sneak in a couple of different doors to get a look, and most people were very friendly, but the tour...FAIL.

We did go through the Pro Shop, interesting how that was open and going well, and managed to

sneak a few pictures of the interior. I was

surprised that when we were there, they still didn't have any turf down at all. I understand that they put some in a few weeks back for a soccer event.

I've already come to grips with the fact that I won't be able to afford tickets to any games for a while (I never went to Texas Stadium either, however), but it was neat to see the stadium for perspective when I watch them this fall on TV.

JJ spent a day at Woodward trying out his newest tricks and skills.

We also did a lot of shopping. SK found a new coolest place ever to go dreaming. If you've never been to an IKEA store, SK believes that it is the closest thing to Disneyland for adults! We saw amazing things!

One of the great places we ate was called Buca di Beppo. It's a family-style Italian restaurant. SK isn't too sure the food was the best she'd ever eaten, but it was fun. Couple of shots of the gang.

We came home from Dallas on a Sunday, then SK, our Abilene road rep, and I took off on Monday for Indiana to tour the Conn-Selmer plants. More about that next time!