Sanity Trip

Well, Mom finally snapped after a year of tremendous teen boy stress and decided to take a spur of the moment two day trip to Devil Town (i.e. Childress Texas) to spend some time with Aunt Jane and Cousin Sammy.

Look who we found on our way go walking in the goat graveyard.  That was one seriously big bull frog.  Bethany, of course, wanted to take him home.

Jane graciously offered to let us stay at her house even though we totally just showed up at her chapel during Sunday School unannounced, but the kids simply had to go swimming.  So here they are enjoying some "quality" cousin time at the Quality Inn. :)

Sam and the girls all played hookie Monday and spent the day at the Childress park eating Dairy Queen,  feeding ducks and rescuing turtles.

Jane and I just chilled out on the park benches until...

The kids discovered a turtle floundering in the water attached to a fishing line tangled in the reeds.  They quickly called for the moms and we worked for what seemed like ever trying to get him out of the lake.  I finally just walked into the muck and grabbed him out.  Ewww!  The poor thing had a fishing hook impaled in his cheeck and he was terrified.  We couldn't find anything to cut the fishing line with so I pulled the line out of the reeds (again after what seemed like ever) and tried to remove the hook.  After that didn't work, the kids were practically in tears.  So, we just loaded up the car and took the poor guy to the vet.  Luckily the veterenarian just took care of the problem lickety-split and sent us on our way without a bill.  Aww! Thanks, Dr. Awesome!  Of course Bethany wanted to take the turtle home, but we convinced her that he'd had enough trauma for the day and we returned him to his marshy home where hopefully he recovered uneventfully.

And then it was time for the grand finale of our trip  - Sam's baseball game!  This is his first season playing and we thought he was quite awesome.  We even saw him get a hit.  Go Sam!  I predict a fabulous career ahead for this great kid.  After the game, we loaded up and braved hailstones as big as golf balls, saw a tornado chaser truck off to the side of the road and killed five million moths on our windshield as we travelled home relaxed and ready to face the last month of the most horrible school year in the history of Smithkind.  Three more weeks people and I will never think of it again!  On the plus side, I did get an A+ in chemistry so it wasn't a horrible school year for everyone.  :)