Our trip to Ft. Worth, Texas, ridiculously long post

The week after Christmas we went to the Armed Forces Bowl in Ft. Worth Texas. (Jim is in charge of team travel for the AF sports teams) We woke up Christmas morning, quickly opened presents, and headed out the door for Texas. We felt bad for ruining Christmas day with a road trip, but we figured it would be worth it in the end. We had a great drive up until the 10 hour point. It was supposed to only take 11 hours. At that point the roads started getting really slushy and icy. Then, it moved to frozen slush and pure sheets of ice. That area in TX hadn't had snow in 100 years, and it had snowed 14 inches the day before. There were hundreds of cars and semi's off the road, and even 5 or 6 SNOWPLOWS were off the road! Even being from Colorado, it was terrible driving. Well, once we were way out in the boonies, they closed the freeway, with us on it! We had to sleep trapped in the car for 8 HOURS!! The line of cars was thousands and thousands of people long. They even sent the national guard out to rescue drivers. We never saw them because we were too far out. Here is the best picture I could come up with at the time:


At this point the girls are all crying and saying "This is the worst Christmas Ever!". We felt so bad! So Jim stayed up all night turning the car back on every 20 minutes or so to warm back up. I was happy Jim had just filled up the gas tank, so we didn't have to worry too much about that. I tried to sleep, as well as possible. We got close to having the girls layer up with clothes from their suitcase, but their small blankets worked fine. We kept ourselves entertained by all the male drivers taking the "walk of shame" to "use the restroom" right on the side of the road. You do what you gotta do! Even if it is in front of thousands of people. We being a family of mostly girls had to improvise.... The front bumper with blankets to form a curtain...enough said. Yes we are a crass family that laughs at innapropriate things! Anyway we finally were able to get moving for about 1 mile after 8 hours, and stopped again. Jim ran up the road to push someone out, I followed him, dodged other cars and we finally broke free and were able to go off on our own. So, a road trip totalling 22 hours, when we finally made it to the hotel we looked like something the cat dragged in.
Speaking of the hotel, it was gorgeous right downtown Ft. Worth. A guy who works with Jim had told the hotel that Jim was going to Iraq and the hotel gave us a suite. That definitely worked in our favor. The beds were turned down for us and we fell into them immediately!!
The next day we explored Ft. Worth, which is the cleanest, nicest, cutest, downtown ever.


Cute cowboy boot stockings at the hotel
Let's see where was I? Oh yah
There was another AF family there with 3 girls all the same ages, and we had a ball with them, all the girls got along great.
In the hotel there was a hospitality room for all the AF coaches and staff. In this magical room was: 3 catered meals a day, tons of candy and drinks, snacks, games, you name it, it was there. That room was a lot of fun. In fact, on the second day we went to a movie ,but first we stopped at the hospitality room and got a bunch of candy. Kimrie said "mom that was so tacky" after I finished laughing I said "Yes it was.. But I don't care, live a little!" So anyway, the first night we went to a rodeo, which I affectionately call a bloodbath massacre. This ferocious,evil, bull provided us with the opportunity to shield our childrens eyes as it flipped a horse with a rider on it, and then started goring the horse in the stomach. This was not the only death defying incident that evening, there were many more. I will spare you the details.
Here we are before the rodeo, standing with a longhorn who you could tell was so humiliated by his life:

You can tell the girls are thrilled to be forced to stand there. As you can see, Kimrie has perfected her fake smile.
We had a very fun day with Jim's brother who lives in Houston (Mike and Brita) and their kids who drove up to spend the day with us. We really enjoyed playing with all the cousins. We went out to eat, went to a ceramics shop, and to the Stockyards in Ft. Worth.


We went to the grassy knoll, in Dallas where JFK was shot. It felt so weird to be excited to see such a tragic place. It was neat to see a part of history though.

The bowl put on a kids day where they took all the kids to a museum, bowling and an arcade all day with no parents! I was happy that one of the moms decided to go just in case. I was a little worried about Abbey getting scared, but she had more fun than anyone! They got to ride on a huge chartered bus with a police escort. I really got a kick out of that. Oh and a t-shirt. They had a great day, and Jim and I enjoyed a date of lunch and a movie.

On the last day, we went to the super fancy Galleria Mall in Dallas and the best jewelry store I've ever seen called Sam Moon.
Here is the Christmas tree in the Galleria Mall. It was the biggest tree I've ever seen in my life. And the mall was full of all the fancy stores you see in movies, but never actually buy stuff in. There was an American Girl cafe we went into, which was a big mistake because our kids have never gotten in to those $150 dolls until we went there.

And now Jim's worst nightmare, a huge store full of cheap jewelry.. More fun than a girl should have. Obviously Jim was on what we like to call "suicide watch." I know you shouldn't joke about that, but we think it's funny, and as you can tell from this picture, it might just be a true statement.

Phew.. so the last day was the football game, which we did not go to, because we had to get home so we could send Jim off to Iraq. So he helped get the players on the bus and we headed home. Thankfully the trip home was uneventful and boring.
You'll be happy to know that by the end of the trip the girls were saying the had the best time ever, and can we go again next year! We felt the same way, it was wonderful to just be together and play. Especially because it took our minds completely off what was coming up next as soon as we got home. All in all a great week, and I do plan to go next year!