In a trip in part to celebrate our third wedding anniversary and in part to visit Heather’s sister now that she has had a few months to settle into her new job, we went to Dallas.
Technically, we went to Fort Worth, but as we soon discovered there isn’t really a break between the two cities. We forgot to pack a camera, so this post will be light on pictures.
Our first day there we had a lazy morning and played Ticket to Ride while waiting for Kelsey’s boyfriend to arrive. Heather and I are getting rather proficient at teaching the game, or at least that is my opinion… maybe the new players don’t agree. After our little group went out to lunch and did a little driving around, we headed back to the apartment to play more Ticket to Ride.
That evening, we headed over to Fort Worth’s stock yard area. I don’t really know what I was expecting, but I found the endless line of gift shops packed with people dressed up as if they were cowboys a little jarring. I should point out that being able to walk around without a coat was novel in itself, so maybe my impression the afternoon was overly positive, but we had fun just wandering around.
At some point, we found this:
After a nice dinner and a movie, we called it a night.
The next morning, Kelsey had to work, so Heather drove her to the hospital leaving us with a car for the day. We headed into Dallas to meet up with Heather’s friend Taryn.
This is as good a time as any to throw in a sideline about the traffic in the Dallas area. GOOD GRIEF there are a lot of cars moving around down there. It didn’t seem to matter what time or where we were going, there was ample competition for the road. I really can’t imagine getting ourselves to the places we went without GPS. The abundance of options sometimes when trying to figure out where to go made every trip a little intense, but we never got irrecoverably lost 🙂
Taryn gave us a little tour of her end of town, complete with a long walk around the local lake (have I mentioned the weather being warmer yet?). Later that day we went through the Dallas Aquarium. It turns out to be almost as much a zoo as aquarium, containing monkeys, snakes, alligators, penguins, and then lots of fish.
That night we met up with Kelsey and her boyfriend, Taryn and her boyfriend and Heather and I at a place in downtown Fort Worth. My estimation biased on the people there and the music they were playing is that it was way cooler than anywhere Heather and I would normally go. We had great time getting to talk to everyone, and the food was amazing, so I guess there isn’t any reason to complain 🙂
The next morning we went out for breakfast with Taryn and then she dropped us off at the airport on her way to church. We got back into Kansas City with plenty of time to stop in and check on our nephew, and his parents. Holden is just starting to talk, and after an initial bout of shyness was more than happy to give aunt Heather a tour of his domain.
We got back to Des Moines to find that the weather was nearly as nice as what we had left in Texas. Everyone tried to take advantage of it while they could. I probably heard this sentiment every day it was nice “This weather is amazing! … but we are going to pay for it soon.” Given that I was running in shorts on Tuesday, the fact that we only have four inches of snow on the ground today seems less dire than I was expecting. I suppose there is still time for the blizzard everyone seems to think we have earned to arrive.
-Jordan
Nelsons 