My fingers hurt now...
Well, my weekend was crazy.
Saturday I woke up and picked up Sveta (an exchange student from Romania, she's staying with some friends of ours) and we drove for two hours to Dublin, Texas, to visit the oldest Dr Pepper Bottling plant ever for my history project. We had a lot of fun, she's a really cool gal. Y'all will have to meet her sometime. Anyways, we got there and the next tour wasn't for a while, so I took her for her first ever Sonic meal, which she loved. We went back to the plant and then took a tour. It was really cool, cause as part of the tour they gave us a bottle of Dublin Dr Pepper to drink, from the old returnable bottles that they still bottle in. They were so heavy, and it was really cool to think that these had been in use since the 70s, washed and reused a kerjillion times or so. The guy (who was really nice, and actually worked in the plant when it was bottling, which they didn't do every day) showed us how the machines work and then took us into a mini-seum (not quite a museum, but almost) full of old pictures and ads and bottles. That was really cool, to see the old ads. There was one wooden stand-up of the patriotic Pepper girl, and it's the only one still in existence, because people protested at how scantily-clad she was and the company recalled all of them and destroyed them. They wouldn't let us take flash pictures in that room, cause the light would have degraded all the posters. After the tour, we went into the shop and I got a brochure thing (for the information and whatnot for my project), and then I got a shirt and some Dr Pepper chapstick, and I was going to buy some cans of Dublin DP but they guy whispered at me that it was actually cheaper at the Wal-Mart down the road (see? I told you he was nice). I meant to get the Dr Pepper cake and frosting mix, but I forgot to. I'm kicking myself now. I did see it at a shop downtown, but it was really 'spenive, but I'll get it someday. Anyhow, we left and headed towards the Wal-Mart in Stephenville. Sveta had only been in a Wal-Mart once before, when some of her friends from school had taken her, and even then she had only been in the front bit of the store, so she was amazed. As we were walking, we passed a display that had bags of marshmallows on it. She stopped me and asked me what the marshmallows were, and I explained, and she picked up a bag of the tiny 'mallows. After we found the Dublin Dr Pepper, we started heading up to check out, and we passed the candy aisle, all ready for Halloween. She wanted to detour through that, and I explained to her what all the different candies were as we went. She got a snickers and a Twix, and I got a bag full of caramels. It's the kind that comes with sticks for making caramel-covered apples with... I'm going to have to stock up on these before Halloween is over. I love these things. So we finally got to the checkout and I paid for my caramels and Dublin Dr Pepper, and she paid for her marshmallows and candies. I swear I could feel our teeth dissolving as we walked out... but oh well. I opened my caramels and she her marshmallows and Twix and snickers as soon as we got in the car, and away north we went.
When we got home, I was ready to take a nap. I told Sveta what a nap was, and she agreed. But my aunt got there and we all went downtown. We wandered around a bit, and while Sveta was in a store looking around, I was outside with Madison and some guy started painting a picture of Madison. My aunt ended up buying it. Later, I was playing with Madison (well, holding her upside-down by her legs and tickling her) and some random guy took a picture of us. It was really weird.
After all that, we made our way to La Madeline to eat, and it was good, except that when we first got there Mason was really tired so he was crying. Some lady cut in line between my mom and Judy (Sveta's host mom, who had met us down there) to complain to the manager to try to get us thrown out or something. Judy promptly told the lady off, and then the evil witch lady left with her panties in a bunch in a tizzy. I had been delegated the job of sitting with Mason and trying to feed him ("When he opens his mouth, just shove a spoonful in," which usually works, but it didn't this time, he was just *too* tired) when this happened, so I didn't see the witch lady, but I cheered for Judy when I was told. I kinda wished the lady had come to complain to me, as I would have *loved* to shove a pureed-peas-covered baby in her arms to watch her magically make him stop crying, but it's prolly a good thing she didn't. My yelling prolly would have done more harm than good. I betcha she's never had kids. I hope she hasn't, at least, otherwise I'd feel so sorry for the poor kids raised by that witch woman.
Anyways, after that we wandered in Barnes & Noble, and I made my way up to the science/math section. I wish I could have bought all of them. I started talking to this guy who was also looking through that section. He was really nice, and really smart, and he was a Christian. He recommended a book to me on Chaos Theory (which I did buy, and I love it, it's really cool) and I showed him a book on the phantom things our brains do and a book on pi that I want, and we chatted. Then he left to go back to his school which turned out to be a few hours drive away, and I kicked myself for not getting his name or something. He would have been so much fun to talk to. After I narrowed it down to 2 books I was going to buy, I went down and checked out (woohoo for employee discount!) and tried to help people find each other (we had scattered around the store amazingly effectively), but failed, and ended up hanging out outside with one of the guys from the café who went on break. That was pretty fun. I work with such neat people. After that I made my way to my car and went home. I crashed.
The next morning, Sunday, I went to church for the first time in waaaay too long, and I net up with the newly-formed college group. I was thrilled to find out that Simon is leading it. Simon, btw, is such a great leader. Not only does he know his stuff and know how to teach it and lead a group, but he's such an amazingly caring person. He really cares for the people in his group and watches out for us, especially the girls cause he knows firsthand how boys think and operate, and he is just wonderful. He's almost like an older, protective brother. Plus he's got that awesome Zimbabwe accent... heh heh. Anyhow, we all went out to lunch and it was cool. I got to talk to a couple people I haven't seen in a while, and Schlotzskies (I KNOW I spelled that wrong) makes a good chicken pesto pizza.
After that, I went over to Sveta's to help her with a physics project, making a mousetrap car. I wasn't able to stay long, but I was able to take her to Home Depot and get her some supplies and I gave her some ideas on how to do it and got her started. Judy was going to make me swirly brownies as payment for helping her, but they were having issues with plumbing and showerheads that day, so she didn't get around to it. I'm expecting them later, though :-)
After a little bit there I had to run over to my aunt's house, on the other side of Dallas, a nice hour-long drive away. The most exciting bit of the day was when Madison decided that she wanted to go for a bike ride. This involved putting Mason in his stroller so we could take him along, and of course during all this, the dogs got really excited, and I knew it would be impossible to get out the door without them, so I just put leashes on them and took them, thinking it would be easier... HA! One dog is hyperactive and the other is old, fat, and lazy. So I had one dog pulling me forwards, the other pulling me back (or rather, I was pulling him forwards...), and I was pushing a stroller. Madison, for some reason, would not go more than a few feet in front of the stroller, so the hyperactive mutt dog kept getting tangled... and then she decided she wanted to hold the leash of the fat lazy mutt dog.
Oh. My. Word. It took us more than half an hour to go up the street and back. We're talking *maybe* a fifth of a mile here. We stopped every few feet to untangle a mutt dog, go over a bump, goad a mutt dog into moving, whatever. The worst was when the spastic one pulled his leash out of my hand, which bonked poor Mason on the back of the head, so he started crying when I was trying to catch the spastic thing. Or maybe the worst was when Madison kept throwing down her bike in frustration after I took the fat one's leash back, because she wanted to hold his leash why couldn't she hold his leash could she please hold his leash???
Man, I love my cousins. No really, I do, otherwise there would have been much yelling...
But no, it's wasn't really that bad. They really are quite easy to babysit, 99% of the time. Especially Mason, he's such a content baby. He's just this fat little bundle of happiness, with a giant "Charlie Brown" head... really very adorable :-)
When Uncle Marc got home, I left and went to a Starbucks in way south Arlington, to meet with the college group people. I had two caramel macchiatos... such yummy, yummy drinks, if you get them with about half the espresso they are meant to have. I really don't like coffee, but the way I have them make these, there's really not much coffee in them, so they are really good. Anyhow, I met a few new people besides the people I already knew, and we just kinda hung out and chatted. A few different times we actually started talking about spiritual stuff, but mostly we just talked about whatever. I can't wait till Thursday night to meet again. And I finally have Simon's new phone number, so I can actually call him instead of that lady who says "We're sorry, this number is no longer in service..."
After all that, I went home and finished off the last little bit of some astronomy homework and I just went to bed. I was soooo tired.
Keep in mind that, as of Friday, my plan for the entire weekend consisted of the Dublin DP plant and a lot of napping, which I desperately needed (and still do...).
I ate 12 caramels while writing all this mess. Do I have a new longest entry now, or what?
Saturday I woke up and picked up Sveta (an exchange student from Romania, she's staying with some friends of ours) and we drove for two hours to Dublin, Texas, to visit the oldest Dr Pepper Bottling plant ever for my history project. We had a lot of fun, she's a really cool gal. Y'all will have to meet her sometime. Anyways, we got there and the next tour wasn't for a while, so I took her for her first ever Sonic meal, which she loved. We went back to the plant and then took a tour. It was really cool, cause as part of the tour they gave us a bottle of Dublin Dr Pepper to drink, from the old returnable bottles that they still bottle in. They were so heavy, and it was really cool to think that these had been in use since the 70s, washed and reused a kerjillion times or so. The guy (who was really nice, and actually worked in the plant when it was bottling, which they didn't do every day) showed us how the machines work and then took us into a mini-seum (not quite a museum, but almost) full of old pictures and ads and bottles. That was really cool, to see the old ads. There was one wooden stand-up of the patriotic Pepper girl, and it's the only one still in existence, because people protested at how scantily-clad she was and the company recalled all of them and destroyed them. They wouldn't let us take flash pictures in that room, cause the light would have degraded all the posters. After the tour, we went into the shop and I got a brochure thing (for the information and whatnot for my project), and then I got a shirt and some Dr Pepper chapstick, and I was going to buy some cans of Dublin DP but they guy whispered at me that it was actually cheaper at the Wal-Mart down the road (see? I told you he was nice). I meant to get the Dr Pepper cake and frosting mix, but I forgot to. I'm kicking myself now. I did see it at a shop downtown, but it was really 'spenive, but I'll get it someday. Anyhow, we left and headed towards the Wal-Mart in Stephenville. Sveta had only been in a Wal-Mart once before, when some of her friends from school had taken her, and even then she had only been in the front bit of the store, so she was amazed. As we were walking, we passed a display that had bags of marshmallows on it. She stopped me and asked me what the marshmallows were, and I explained, and she picked up a bag of the tiny 'mallows. After we found the Dublin Dr Pepper, we started heading up to check out, and we passed the candy aisle, all ready for Halloween. She wanted to detour through that, and I explained to her what all the different candies were as we went. She got a snickers and a Twix, and I got a bag full of caramels. It's the kind that comes with sticks for making caramel-covered apples with... I'm going to have to stock up on these before Halloween is over. I love these things. So we finally got to the checkout and I paid for my caramels and Dublin Dr Pepper, and she paid for her marshmallows and candies. I swear I could feel our teeth dissolving as we walked out... but oh well. I opened my caramels and she her marshmallows and Twix and snickers as soon as we got in the car, and away north we went.
When we got home, I was ready to take a nap. I told Sveta what a nap was, and she agreed. But my aunt got there and we all went downtown. We wandered around a bit, and while Sveta was in a store looking around, I was outside with Madison and some guy started painting a picture of Madison. My aunt ended up buying it. Later, I was playing with Madison (well, holding her upside-down by her legs and tickling her) and some random guy took a picture of us. It was really weird.
After all that, we made our way to La Madeline to eat, and it was good, except that when we first got there Mason was really tired so he was crying. Some lady cut in line between my mom and Judy (Sveta's host mom, who had met us down there) to complain to the manager to try to get us thrown out or something. Judy promptly told the lady off, and then the evil witch lady left with her panties in a bunch in a tizzy. I had been delegated the job of sitting with Mason and trying to feed him ("When he opens his mouth, just shove a spoonful in," which usually works, but it didn't this time, he was just *too* tired) when this happened, so I didn't see the witch lady, but I cheered for Judy when I was told. I kinda wished the lady had come to complain to me, as I would have *loved* to shove a pureed-peas-covered baby in her arms to watch her magically make him stop crying, but it's prolly a good thing she didn't. My yelling prolly would have done more harm than good. I betcha she's never had kids. I hope she hasn't, at least, otherwise I'd feel so sorry for the poor kids raised by that witch woman.
Anyways, after that we wandered in Barnes & Noble, and I made my way up to the science/math section. I wish I could have bought all of them. I started talking to this guy who was also looking through that section. He was really nice, and really smart, and he was a Christian. He recommended a book to me on Chaos Theory (which I did buy, and I love it, it's really cool) and I showed him a book on the phantom things our brains do and a book on pi that I want, and we chatted. Then he left to go back to his school which turned out to be a few hours drive away, and I kicked myself for not getting his name or something. He would have been so much fun to talk to. After I narrowed it down to 2 books I was going to buy, I went down and checked out (woohoo for employee discount!) and tried to help people find each other (we had scattered around the store amazingly effectively), but failed, and ended up hanging out outside with one of the guys from the café who went on break. That was pretty fun. I work with such neat people. After that I made my way to my car and went home. I crashed.
The next morning, Sunday, I went to church for the first time in waaaay too long, and I net up with the newly-formed college group. I was thrilled to find out that Simon is leading it. Simon, btw, is such a great leader. Not only does he know his stuff and know how to teach it and lead a group, but he's such an amazingly caring person. He really cares for the people in his group and watches out for us, especially the girls cause he knows firsthand how boys think and operate, and he is just wonderful. He's almost like an older, protective brother. Plus he's got that awesome Zimbabwe accent... heh heh. Anyhow, we all went out to lunch and it was cool. I got to talk to a couple people I haven't seen in a while, and Schlotzskies (I KNOW I spelled that wrong) makes a good chicken pesto pizza.
After that, I went over to Sveta's to help her with a physics project, making a mousetrap car. I wasn't able to stay long, but I was able to take her to Home Depot and get her some supplies and I gave her some ideas on how to do it and got her started. Judy was going to make me swirly brownies as payment for helping her, but they were having issues with plumbing and showerheads that day, so she didn't get around to it. I'm expecting them later, though :-)
After a little bit there I had to run over to my aunt's house, on the other side of Dallas, a nice hour-long drive away. The most exciting bit of the day was when Madison decided that she wanted to go for a bike ride. This involved putting Mason in his stroller so we could take him along, and of course during all this, the dogs got really excited, and I knew it would be impossible to get out the door without them, so I just put leashes on them and took them, thinking it would be easier... HA! One dog is hyperactive and the other is old, fat, and lazy. So I had one dog pulling me forwards, the other pulling me back (or rather, I was pulling him forwards...), and I was pushing a stroller. Madison, for some reason, would not go more than a few feet in front of the stroller, so the hyperactive mutt dog kept getting tangled... and then she decided she wanted to hold the leash of the fat lazy mutt dog.
Oh. My. Word. It took us more than half an hour to go up the street and back. We're talking *maybe* a fifth of a mile here. We stopped every few feet to untangle a mutt dog, go over a bump, goad a mutt dog into moving, whatever. The worst was when the spastic one pulled his leash out of my hand, which bonked poor Mason on the back of the head, so he started crying when I was trying to catch the spastic thing. Or maybe the worst was when Madison kept throwing down her bike in frustration after I took the fat one's leash back, because she wanted to hold his leash why couldn't she hold his leash could she please hold his leash???
Man, I love my cousins. No really, I do, otherwise there would have been much yelling...
But no, it's wasn't really that bad. They really are quite easy to babysit, 99% of the time. Especially Mason, he's such a content baby. He's just this fat little bundle of happiness, with a giant "Charlie Brown" head... really very adorable :-)
When Uncle Marc got home, I left and went to a Starbucks in way south Arlington, to meet with the college group people. I had two caramel macchiatos... such yummy, yummy drinks, if you get them with about half the espresso they are meant to have. I really don't like coffee, but the way I have them make these, there's really not much coffee in them, so they are really good. Anyhow, I met a few new people besides the people I already knew, and we just kinda hung out and chatted. A few different times we actually started talking about spiritual stuff, but mostly we just talked about whatever. I can't wait till Thursday night to meet again. And I finally have Simon's new phone number, so I can actually call him instead of that lady who says "We're sorry, this number is no longer in service..."
After all that, I went home and finished off the last little bit of some astronomy homework and I just went to bed. I was soooo tired.
Keep in mind that, as of Friday, my plan for the entire weekend consisted of the Dublin DP plant and a lot of napping, which I desperately needed (and still do...).
I ate 12 caramels while writing all this mess. Do I have a new longest entry now, or what?