Our Family Vacation to Houston Part 18
We thoroughly enjoyed the last morning of the homeschool conference. We sat together and listened to speakers, feeling the rising excitement of beginning a new school year with the added encouragement and tools we had purchased.
At noon we picked up all the kids and walked down the street to the restaurant where we planned to eat lunch because we had coupons. It was closed, one of those that only opens in the evenings. I suppose I should have known that.
We walked all the way back since our van was parked on the other side of the hotel. On the way we walked by another family from the conference. The huge family was all sitting in the shade of a tree on the side walk while the mother handed out sandwiches and such from a cooler in the trunk of their van. I smiled as I walked by, thinking how miserable that looked, being out there in the heat having to feed the whole family out of the van. I mentioned this to my husband a little later. “That’s funny,” he said. “I had a completely different thought when we walked past them. I thought, ‘That’s the life!’” We had a good laugh over the whole thing. I actually enjoy a picnic, but when I’m pregnant and the weather is over 100 degrees, that is not my idea of “the life!” Unfortunately, as soon as the weather does start getting nice and I’m dying to do things like go on picnics, my husband’s allergies act up so badly that he doesn’t want to step foot outside. Ah well, that is life, I suppose, if not THE life!
So we drove to a different restaurant that we had also looked up ahead of time and had printed online coupons for. This one was completely closed down with the inside gutted out! Ha ha, so much for planning! We spotted a near by buffet, and all relaxed and ate until time to rush back to the conference.
At the end of the conference, the kids put on a concert of some of the things they learned during their stay. My girls stood like little statues and smiled and sang beautifully. If you know my children, then you know that not only was I proud of them, but I was also quite relieved there were no incidents!
Dave and I usually have very different ideas of what “the life” actually looks like, too 🙂
We went to L.A. last April for vacation. They have a restaurant there that Dave’s wanted to try for a long time but they don’t have it here in the midwest. So, we looked it up and punched the address into our GPS and drove all the way to it just to find that it’s nothing more than an abandoned building. The next closest one was too far away. Or after driving to this one, we just didn’t feel like driving any more of a distance.
Eh, life happens, right?
It’s funny how different your perspectives were! My husband and I have different ideas about what “the life” is also. 🙂
I am commenting here on several of your vacation posts! Bummer about the restaurants and not being close enough to hear/see the author you wanted to see! It is wonderful that the everyone enjoyed the conference so much!
I had six children. Home schooling was just out of the box at that time, but I was not too interested in it. I wanted professionals to take care of the lessons. I had a full time job with the washing, cleaning, errands, shopping, etc. I wondered how you manage.