Little girl

Little Lizzie came to visit me in St. Louis not to long ago.  I wish I was half as cool as this girl.  

We had lots of fun.  Free art museum.  Paddle boats at Forest Park.  Rams game.  Lots of Olympic viewing.  Delicious Dewey's Pizza.  Sunday brunch.  Fitz's.  The Loop.  Muddie Buddies.  

I already miss her.  Love you long time, Liz!

This is the way I see it

I am typically not very outspoken about my political views.  I'm not sure I would stump for McCain, but this is how I feel about Obama.  

Courtesy of NPR

Quoted by Ron Carey, chairman of the Republican Party of Minnesota

"I describe Barack Obama as basically being like a sugar high.  You know, it tastes good and you feel wonderful for a while.  But the sugar high is starting to wear off, and reality is setting in...People don't feel as good when they look at the specifics of what an Obama presidency would look like."

Short end of the Shake

Despite the turbulent beginning to our trip, the rest of the vacation went smoothly.  Days were filled with sleeping in, trips to the beach and/or pool, the "play area", good dinners and always a treat to finish the night.  What more can you ask for?

On one particular evening, we were on our way back to our hotel with Erik, Kristin, and Reesy and James.  James is the happiest 2 year old I know.  The kid does the Zoolander face on command and wants to do everything his big sister does.  Reesy is just darling and soft-spoken, but knows how to get what she wants; typical 4 year old.  

Anyway, back to the car ride home.  We decided to finish the evening with ice cream from the local Chick-fil-A; good, cheap, everybody's happy.  We ordered a couple of Ice Dream cones and a couple of shakes, but Reesy was not happy about this.  She wanted nothing to do with Chick-fil-A or its frozen treats.  That was until the delights entered the car and she insisted on my shake.  There's not much you can do to console a 4 year old in the back seat of the car screaming for your shake.  You just give it up.  Simple as that.  

So back went the shake and Reesy was as good as new.  The shake was a small sacrifice to keep the peace.  I know she enjoyed it, too, because she was let down when she tried the "other one" that had "no cookies?".  Next time at the Chick-fil-A drive-thru with little Rees, I'll order 2.    

We've only just begun

Dave and I headed to Florida last weekend.  We left Thursday early evening with the expectation of being in Florida by Thursday night around 9 p.m.  Boy were we wrong.  

Our original itinerary took us from St. Louis to Memphis to Fort Walton Beach.  Instead we went from St. Louis to Memphis, diverted to Little Rock for fuel, to Memphis, missed our connecting flight with the offer of flying out Friday NIGHT at 7:50 p.m., or to fly from Memphis to Houston to Fort Walton Friday morning.  I'm really not making this up.  

Of course everything was blamed on "weather."  This means no ticket refunds, no additional flights, no hotel accommodations...nothing.  We called around to a few hotels, which were all booked except for the $59 smoking room at the Econo Lodge.  No way.  

So what'd we do?  Over dinner at the airport Arby's (the only thing open in the airport at this point), we decided to get in the car and drive.  So off we went to Jackson, Mississippi on through Alabama and finally into Florida.  Six states and five hundred-plus miles later, we arrived in Destin on Friday around 1:00 p.m.  Good thing the car was equipped with the Magellan, which never failed.