This past weekend, we traveled to Dallas for the Texas Tech-Baylor game that was at the Cotton Bowl. We picked Sammy up at the airport on Friday night and then Saturday morning, we tried out Dallas' public transportation. First, we had to drive to Point A: The Park and Ride. That took us about 20 minutes and after driving through a maze we finally reached it. The photo above is the Houston boys trying to console Seth after learning that the train that was taking us to Point B would arrive 15 minutes before Kickoff at Point C. He wasn't happy. In his defense, Dallas doesn't have the greatest public transportation system. And we've been to cities that have great public transportation systems. If Dallas wants to even come close to competing, they need to do a lot of work. It was ridiculous. It was however, much better than driving to the Cotton Bowl. After reaching Point B and being herded like cattle onto buses (seriously, I heard many jokes about that and heard many "moos"), I saw the traffic. Eeek. The buses took us through some sketchy neighborhoods and then finally, finally, Point C: The Cotton Bowl, which, incidentally, was surrounded by The Great State Fair of Texas!! Oh boy.
My mood lifted immediately when I saw that our seats were shaded. It was rather warm and I was wearing long sleeves and jeans. So I was comfortable the whole game. We had a great view of the field and after seeing some tortillas fly, I was reminiscent about my ole college days when we would go watch the game. We saw The Goin' Band from Raider land and we even won which made one little boy so happy. The other little boy was just ready to go to the fair. Can you guess which one?
The fair! This is my view from sitting at a picnic table and being sprayed on by water spritzers (you can see the spray in the picture). Being novice fair goers, we had no idea that to buy anything you needed coupons. So Sammy got in line to buy coupons. Well, he bought a fair amount of them. Turns out, though, the only thing Noah wanted to do was play the games and guess what? You can't use coupons for the games, you had to buy credits! Those fair people have got this figured out. They know people will buy a whole lot of coupons at one time because who wants to stand in a long line more than once? And they know that no one will question the people that swipe the game credit card you just spent $5 on when they say, "Empty!" and you have to quickly buy another one so your child can try their hardest to win a crappy toy. They know when people get tired they will go home and they don't care because they have their money already from the coupons that weren't used. Maybe I am not meant for the fair.
But, BUT, we had a good time anyway. Noah won a Texas Tech basketball for Rhett and a Scooby Doo doll, er, I mean, stuffed animal, that he gave to Rhett too. Rhett won a stuffed parrot and Seth won Noah a stuffed parrot. Everyone was happy! They saw giant reptiles with their Pop and rode on the carousel and tried not to smile. Sammy and I wanted to ride the Ferris wheel and then when Uncle Scott and Sara joined us, they wanted to as well, but the line was long and we were tired, so no Ferris wheel.
Big Tex is telling us goodbye because that is what we were trying to leave when we saw him. Thank God for cellphones because we lost Sammy and Scott once and so we stayed by the statue until they came and found us.
The end of the fair, but not the end of our day. No, we had to make it back to the Park and Ride. Another 1 1/2 journey (more waiting, always waiting), then we stopped, got Steak n' Shake, ate at the hotel and I was thankful we weren't at home in our beds because none of us took showers to wash off that night. We just dropped into bed and lights out.
This weekend was a tiring one, but I think we all had a great time. It was good to see family and it was good to get away. I think it was fun to see all the people wearing red and black at the game and at the fair. Living in Oklahoma, well, we just don't see that here. I kind of liked seeing the absence of OU colors. It was fun being part of the crowd in that sense.
Have a wonderful Monday!
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