The Trip

Well, the "not probable" happened! We left at 10:30pm Monday night! Mama and Daddy took turns driving through the night, and we made it to Mississippi by 7:30am. We then visited our grandfather for about an hour. From there we made it to Arlington, Texas where we bedded down at our uncle's house. We left early the next morning, and found a Cabela's. We are, unfortunately, deprived of a Cabela's in Tennessee, which makes us all the more ready to step into one for an hour or three. I got a multi-tool key chain there! Guess what! There was a Cracker Barrel right next to it! Great lunch stop! Anyway, we finally made it to San Antonio, and maneuvered our way through the traffic. We actually found the Gardenia Inn on our first try! The Lingo's were there before us, and they kindly helped us haul our stuff up to the beautiful room on the third floor. Once we freshened up, we all went River Walking! We all had a good time of it, and Daddy's wonderful Spanish "abilities" were discovered. We dined at a delicious seafood restaurant called Landry's. After a wonderful dinner, we got to go on a river cruise. It was a lovely as I remembered it being at night, but I think we had a better guide before. We made it back to the B&B, and fell into our beds quite exhausted.

The next morning, we had a delicious (I am afraid I am going to be using that word a lot, but we did have an enormous amount of good food!) breakfast. There were three courses: a fruit bowl, a main dish, and, the best part, a dessert! After the first day, our accommodating hosts learned that Luke ate only the kiwi; that's what they gave him the rest of the time! After the breakfast we headed out to Market Square. We decided to ride the trolley, but we got an extremely rude driver. We got to El Mercado an hour before it opened! So, we decided to walk all the way across town to the Alamo. It was sometime in the course of this walk that Navidad was re-defined. It now means: a navigating father, particularly to the ignorant-"Spanish-speaking" Americans. We got to the Alamo, and spent 1 to 2 hours there. I found a different key chain (than the one I got four years ago), and I got it. Still, the Alamo gift shop is way over-priced! From here, we headed to the information center. There I got yet another key chain; this one described the river walk. I like those that describe things. Then we went to the "trolley office" (those are my words, I'm not sure what it was called officially) where we got a couple of all day passes! Now all we had to do was get the trolley color system down, and get to a trolley stop. We had much better experiences with all the rest of our trolley drivers. Now, we made it to Market Square, and started shopping, window shopping mainly. Finally, most of us got exhausted, and quite hungry. We had lunch at a Mexican restaurant, and a couple of Mexicans came in with guitars. They played us one song, and then demanded (a little strong, I admit) their six dollars. We didn't do that again. After lunch Mama, Luke, and I went back into the shops, and I got a shawl and a skirt. Mama got a skirt, too, but it was for the shawl that we went back in. After this, the adults needed a siesta, so we went back to our rooms. After a little while (we had to let Luke get to sleep), we kids played a couple of games. We finally settled on Scrabble, and played that until we needed to get ready for the Conference. We went to the appropriate place to wait for the doors to be opened. When we got to our seats, we saw our first of Mr. Stouffer and Mr. Lovett. They sat with us for the remainder of the night. After the keynote speaker, Doug Phillips, was done, we all, including the men mentioned above, went to dinner. I learned that the fastest way to another block is through a large hotel! We went through 2 before we settled on Denny's for dinner. We only had to wait a very few minutes for them to seat our crowd of 12 people! The service was great, and the food wasn't bad either. A long day thus comes to an end.

Day three in San Antonio was not quite as exhausting as the previous days. We only had to sit and listen to our chosen speakers. This day we had lunch at, guess, a Mexican restaurant! Apparently one well known and highly acclaimed among the Vision Forum people. We got to see many of them passing through! After lunch was more sitting, but we met more people. We had dinner (pizza this time, not Mexican!) with three other families and Mr. and Mrs. Smith from Smith Family blog in a hotel lobby. This provided very good conversation and an extraordinary view of the river walk. Since the pizza arrived very late, we were late for the last speaker, but we didn't miss too much.

Our last full day in San Antonio was a whirl of activity. We organized ourselves better, and had someone in listening to almost every speaker. For lunch, our guys went out and provided rice, and steak, and a variety of other things to us. For dinner, we ate at another Mexican restaurant with Mr. Fish and his son. That was a laughter-filled meal!

The next morning, we Bradshaw's made a sad departure from our nice little vacation. We enjoyed every minute of our time in San Antonio with such wonderful friends. Unfortunately, the tale does not end here. We got away early enough to be home that night, but the suburban started acting up around Dickson. Fortunately for us, our aunt lives in Dickson, so we barged into her peaceful home at 11:50pm or so. We deprived her of some sleep, I fear. Yesterday morning, Daddy took the car to a transmission shop, but the people there couldn't find anything wrong with the transmission. Daddy also said that the problem is not a little thing, but we still don't know what it is. The next few hours were a maze of cars, rides, and movies, so I will spare any readers that stuff and give you the end result (the movies was all that we kids could safely do alone and keep Luke occupied at the same time). The end result was that Daddy brought the suburban back on the trailer to Aunt Carol's house, and we spent another night at her place.

This morning, we had a nice little cramped ride in the truck back home. We went through Centerville, for all those who it holds any significance.

I should also say that our hen is being a very good mother, and that the chick is still alive! There is your long post, Kaliste. Pictures later...maybe.