Texas Part II

So, the second half of the week we spent with my parents at my dad's meeting.  We stayed at the Gaylord hotel which was enormous.  This first picture is the view from our hotel room balcony.  The hotel had a stream running through it, a miniature town with trains, fun restaurants, fish ponds with koi, etc.  We had so much fun walking through the hotel and exploring everything and only got lost a couple of times!

So, the meeting we went to with my dad was called "Commodity Classic."  It is a big meeting that NCGA (National Corn Growers Association) has every year.  They partner with the soybean association and this year with wheat and sorghum and have a big trade show, there is lots of meetings and every night there is entertainment and dinners.  I didn't get to see any of the entertainment, since the kids needed their sleep, but the two big acts my parents saw were: Phil Vassar and Pam Tillis-both country singers.  Anyways, the trade show was the best part!  It was in a big convention center and there were tons of booths set up about grains, pesticides, fertilizer, etc.  You have to remember that the trade show is directed towards farmers and products they use.  For us non-farmers, we had a great time going to all the booths and picking up the free stuff.  We got tons of free pens, pads of papers, yo-yo's that light up, shirts for the kids that say "Grown in America", tape measures, cloth bags, etc.  The best thing I got was this super nice swiss army backpack.  It would probably cost at least $100 to buy in the store.  I saw some people getting the backpacks and I wanted one.  The only problem is you had to be a farmer, because you had to fill out a survey about your farm, acreage, crop, etc.

I didn't think I could pull off faking my way through it.  So, my dad asked one of his farmer friends and he went and got me the backpack.  If you saw this thing, you would want one too!!  By far

 our favorite part was climbing on all the farm equipment.  They had tractors of all sizes, combines,  and tons of other things.  It was so much fun!!

 The day the trade show opened, we were waiting to get in and my mom saw a friend of hers that she hadn't seen in a long time.  This friend had twin girls that were three.  Well, Ethan was sitting in his stroller eating popcorn and next thing I know, the two girls had his popcorn and were feeding it to him!  They were taking turns putting popcorn in Ethan's mouth and he was just sitting there so content.  He is only two and he already has girls waiting on him hand and foot--every man's dream!!   His dad would be proud of him!

Another day, there was a big meeting in the morning where they had a comedian and motivational speaker come.  Usually it is pretty interesting, so I decided to 

take the kids to it.  It was in this HUGE room and the plan was to sit on the side, so we could make a quick exit, but my dad had other ideas.  We ended up sitting three rows from the front, right in the center.  There were probably at least a thousand people there, so we were really in the front.  Anyways, they had this guy come and he got up on stage, had music going and started going to town on this chalkboard.  We couldn't tell what he was drawing, but it was fun to watch him.  Finally it turned out to be a road, which represented the road of life and he talked about how we live our lives determines how we travel the road of life.  Decisions determine your destiny.  He was a really interesting speaker, had great anecdotes and was very humorous.  He had this ugly dinosaur with little arms that you could put on your hand and he said when he bought it he took it over to his mom's house and put it in the toilet, put the lid down, but left one claw hanging out--he thought that would be a good tip off.  He said a couple of hours later he got a call from his mom yelling at him and saying she almost had a heart attack she was so scared.  He said, when he has his first baby, he is going to take the dinosaur along and when his wife asks to see the baby, he will wrap the dinosaur up and show it to her and say, "isn't he so cute, the doctors think something is a little different about him and your mom thinks he looks like me."  Anyways, he was pretty funny.  In the middle of his talk, he made this loud noise that scared Kailey and she started screaming.  Of course, since we were in the front, he started making jokes about bringing a baby and then he held up the dinosaur to see if it would calm Kailey down, but she started screaming even louder, it was pretty funny.

Well, I could go on and on about what a fun time we had.  We just had such a relaxing and fun time and I am so glad we got to go to Texas and sorry our trip is over.  Thanks for such a fun time and we look forward to visiting again!