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!

Summer '09, pt. 1

Sometimes I think that I am the mental equivalent to Benjamin Button.

Whereas, unfortunately, I am definitely NOT experiencing any physical reversals as I grow older, and believe me my body has been deliberate about showing me ways I am growing older, I am finding myself thinking more like a child lately.

For so many years, because of my job, summer was just a busy time. There was very little family recreation or trips, etc. And I'm sad to say that debriefing myself from this mindset has taken so much longer than I would have thought. But, this summer, we had a breakout!

The idea was quality, individual time with my kids. My kids are all so unique, it's hard to find a single activity that everyone enjoys. But we planned special weekends for KK and JJ, and mom and I found some time to share as well.

I am typing this on the night of my last official day off for a good while. And I feel like a school kid who isn't ready for summer to be over. I've enjoyed my family so much this summer. It is hard to look back and realize how many summers could have been this much fun, but it's also probably not going to change anything either, hmmm? So, I am thankful for the memories of this summer, and I'm already looking forward to planning Summer '10.

I think the easiest way is to break the summer trips down, so over several entries, I'll try!

First up was KK. KK and I took off for San Antonio in June. On the agenda: father/daughter shopping and "Wicked."

The ride down in the Scion xB began auspiciously enough! Our brand new AC unit quit working in the middle of the night, so at 5:00 a.m. I found myself in the attic checking it out. A quick shower and we got on our way about 5:45 a.m. in one of the heaviest rains we had seen in West Texas in quite a while. The rain quickly put KK back to sleep and we hydroplaned to San Angelo, where we stopped for a little caffeine and taquitos/honey butter chicken biscuits.

Once out of San Angelo, KK perked up and introduced Pappy to John Mayer's live album. Not so bad.

In San Antonio, North Star Mall occupied several hours, and then Pappadeaux was a must. KK loves her some shrimp. Her allergic father settled for chicken.

We made it back to the hotel, and then it was showtime!

KK and I were both familiar with the music of "Wicked," but we both found it very interesting that the story we had created in our minds wasn't entirely accurate. The show had much more humor than we expected. We were impressed with the talent and the sets that were created in the historic Majestic theater.

Got a couple of probably illegal shots of the show and the theater.

After the show, KK and I walked to Starbucks on the River Walk, spent some time walking up and down the river people watching, and headed back to the hotel.

The next morning was an easy, no rush morning, check-out, and off to another mall for more shopping before heading back to the big OD.

It was a fast trip, but KK hasn't worked long enough to have earned vacation time, so we had to squeeze everything into the time she had off.

KK and I have always enjoyed each other's company, and this weekend was a great time to catch up on her life, hear her hopes, and thank God for such a wonderful daughter!

Indefinite article indecision...

Sometimes it amazes me, and is a form of entertainment to many others, the things that will shut my thought process down. For example, looking at the subtitle to this blog, I noticed that I originally had the indefinite article "a" before '07. I had a long argument with myself trying to decide if that was indeed correct, since '07 was technically an abreviation for 2007. But it just didn't read correctly. So after two days of mental debate, I changed it to "an." See my point?

Interestingly enough, I don't suffer these issues when it comes to how I dress. Yesterday was day four of the great spring yard renewal program at our house. Day four was exciting to me, because we were moving past maintenance and upkeep into beautification.

The project d'jour was a new flower bed in the front of the yard. Nothing major, just some color and life for the front of the yard. I remember dad doing a project like this on Mission Mill Ln. I don't remember if the flower bed existed already or if he started from scratch, but it was nice. I am certain I didn't realize how long it took him to do it.

My favorite part of the entire project was walking out in the front yard to get started in front of KK and my wife. KK was mortified that I would walk out the door like that! Oh well...

I've got a few pics to document the project. Notice in the pictures that it keeps getting darker! The Fifth was hanging out with us yesterday as well, and he has a way of throwing schedules off.

The yard started like this:

Notice it's dark now?

Took one more this morning just to take one in the daylight.

The first post...

I'm waiting for the water sprinklers to cycle through. I realize this probably strikes you as an amazingly boring evening, and I understand why you would think this way. But it keeps me on task.

You see, our sprinkler system is at least 20 years old at this point. Most people I know with sprinkler systems now have the cool digital display that looks a lot like most thermostats. Not me! My sprinkler system brain is mounted to the wall in a 1-foot square box with a huge dial that allows you to set the amount of time each station will water. Unfortunately, although it does fine while it's actually on a station, it won't cycle from station to station without a little manual encouragement. So every 30 minutes, I truck out to the garage to advance the little wheel another station.

This means I have had 30 minute blocks all evening to accomplish things. Sort of like your TV shows.

Tonight, it is a necessary task. I mowed and fertilized the yard for the first time yesterday and this evening. I know, that probably puts me behind the rest of the world, but it's just about right for us. So I have to do the sprinkler chaperoning to make sure the fertilizer is soaked into hard West Texas ground.

Tomorrow night we get to apply the pesticides (flea, tick, and other pests). This means we get to let the girls (puppies) in while I apply it. And, by the way, our youngest dachshund is with pups. We're not very excited. I lost an extended battle trying to keep our new neighbors' chihuahua out of our back yard.

I hear that chiweenies are pretty popular. Hope so. Yo quiero Wienerschnitzel.

Many of you haven't had an opportunity to see much of our grandson. The Fifth just had his second birthday in March. We really enjoy the opportunities we have to spend with him. He can be so much like his father, yet so uniquely himself. It's fascinating to see how much he changes from week to week.

This is his newest trick. He's howling like the dogs when they hear a siren. He figured this out pretty much on his own, and it is his newest "go-to" move when he's afraid he might be in trouble. He actually prefers to have everyone do this with him.

This year for my birthday, my beautiful wife gave me/us a set of recliners for the living room. You would have thought the boxes were specially shipped for the Fifth's entertainment. He spent the entire evening closing himself up in the boxes, then patiently waiting for someone to "discover" he was in there, then laughing as if it was the first time, every time. I think there is a lesson to share with the world there. Eventually, it wasn't enough for him to be in the box alone, he wanted someone to go in with him. Everyone took a turn being excited to spend time in the recliner boxes. We managed to sneak a pretty good picture of his family while they were spending some quality time together in the box. This was fortunate, since his dad shies away from cameras on most occasions.

Hopefully, you will all get to meet him before much longer. He's just too much joy to keep to ourselves forever!

So, here's a few more of the unlimited supply of pictures we have of this funny little guy.

(My wife wants me to make sure and explain that he thinks every birthday is HIS birthday. We've had seven different parties at our house this spring, so he knows the drill pretty well by now. She feels like this is important for you to know because she would hate for anyone to look at the following pictures and think we had a "Princess" cake for his birthday! This was KK's 19th, but of course, he had to blow out the candles. They were actually sparklers, which messed with him a little, but he thought it was great!)