Our Winning Special Olympic Teams

Congratulations to our Waupaca Special Olympic Basketball teams! Our A Team (on top) brought home a silver medal and our B Team (on bottom) brought home the bronze from the Wisconsin state tournament last weekend. As unorganized and underfinded that our program can be, this was a great moment for us. Thanks also goes to our coaches: Aaron, Joel, Clark, Carrie and Tom for all their hard work and dedication. It paid off in medals this weekend!

Home in snowy Wisconsin

After a 5 days of beautiful weather in Texas, we got to come home to this:

About where we left it but a new layer of ice on top of everything. Hopefully this new year will be less snowy than the past month has been. Maybe Mother Nature will take pity on us.

Here are some images of our time in Texas:

This is a waterfront area near Phil's home with restaurants, shopping, amusement rides, etc. It sustained quite a bit of damage from Hurricane Ike but they are working hard to rebuild. The tall blue tower in the far right used to be a ferris wheel. Most of the cars were either destroyed or disappeared during the storm but they plan on having it reopened by March of 2009.

Our other big trip down there was to visit Space Center Houston museum, which also includes a tour of the Johnson Space Center. One of the items on display (outside) is this Saturn rocket. This was built to be Apollo 18 but the program was cancelled prior to it's launch. The rocket now resides in Houston for public display. Amazing how large it is. I could not even get it all in one picture.

The Wall of Water

Now that I can post pictures, here is the proof that we made it to Houston. This is the "Wall of Water" in downtown Houston. It stands 64 feet high and pours 11,000 gallons a water per minute over the wall. Pretty cold when you get near it since it is in the shade and the spray goes pretty far from the fountain.

As you can see, not a snowflake in sight and plenty of sunshine. Forecast is for more today. I hear it is snowing, again, in Wisconsin. Somehow, I don't care. I will when I get back but for now...

Here is the gang of "kids" we had with us for our trip to downtown Houston. Notice mine in shorts; they could not wait to get in those.

Today is Jeff's 18th birthday. I now officially only have 1 child and 2 adults. Here is the birthday boy having breakfast; his favorite pancakes.

More tomorrow....

Finally in Houston!!

As of 4:30 yesterday afternoon, we have made it to Houston. Short story this time but here it goes:

1) While waiting in St. Louis with the weather cool but sunny, they announced that our flight was once again delayed. This was the ONLY flight leaving that was delayed. We tried not to panic since we had a 3 1/2 hour layover in OKC. They later announced that the plane was having issues at Midway and that was causing the delay. Once again, Midway was getting in our way. After a 2 hour delay, we finally got on our plane.

2) With optimism at it's very highest, we reached OKC with time to spare for the connection. After eating lunch at Sonic (my very first time) we finally got on a plane to Houston. Sorry, so excitement here, we actually made it; we even landed early.

3) As we waited for our luggage, Phil arrived to take us the last leg of our journey. As the bags rolled by, we pulled two of our three off quickly and waited for the third. It never came. The Southwest staff at Hobby were very nice and took all my information and told us the bag would be delivered sometime today; as soon as they found it. Phil took us to his house for a wonderful reception with family and a cold glass of Door County wine.

4) I received a call at 8:45 that they found the bag and would deliver it by 12:15. We started a bet on what time the bag would actually get here. Congrats to Shelley who correctly guessed 12:20 on the dot. Pretty much what we expected from Southwest at this point.

5) So, since we missed two days here, we have rescheduled our flight to Friday from Wednesday. Hopefully the weather will be good and we can fly that day; though getting stuck here would not be that bad.

I'll let you know.....

Vacation?? - Part 2

Well, we are still not in Houston. Here is the story:

1) As the afternoon progressed at Midway, our flight to St. Louis got delayed to the point that we would miss our connection to Houston. After talking to a Southwest 1-800 agent, we discovered the next available flight would be on Monday. She suggested we try to get on stand-by for another flight. She did not realize the thousands of people in Midway trying to do the same thing. After waiting in long lines to talk to gate agents, they told us that since there were numerous travelers trying to make that connection, the plane would be held for us. We decided to go ahead and take that flight. While waiting in the boarding line, they informed us the flight would be further delayed since they were short a crew member and had to wait for her arrival. This delayed us an additional 30 minutes.

2) Upon our arrival in St. Louis, we noticed a plane at the gate where our connection was to be but of course, that was not our plane. That flight had already departed. Needless to say, we have 40 very angry travelers who had all received assurances that the connection would be held for us. There claim was that the flight was too delayed and they could not wait. Our argument was that the flight attendant delayed us so they should have waited. Anyway, after a supervisor spent a long time on the phone, they finally got us hotel vouchers and flights for the next day.

3) So, here we sit in St. Louis airport again waiting for our flight to Oklahoma City where we will finally connect to Houston later this afternoon. With clears skies and a good weather forecast, we are fairly optimistic about making it to Houston today.

I'll let you know...

Vacation??

Supposedly we are on vacation but I am pretty sure this was not the way we planned it to happen. Here is the sequence of events:

1) We left Wisconsin in a snowstorm (pretty stupid in itself) to travel to Chicago. After 7 hours of travel we arrived at my mother-in-laws to an unplowed driveway and only me in boots. We shoveled our way in and crashed. With not much food in the house, we had to go back out for dinner. A long day in itself.

2) After an enjoyable couple of days with Chicago family, we headed to Midway Airport for our trip to Houston. As we were checking in our bags and the sun was setting that day, dense fog was dropping throughout Chicagoland. After a couple of delays, they finally cancelled ours and about 100 more flights going out that night. I was able to secure another flight for us but not till the next afternoon. We had trouble contacting our relatives to come and get us so we called a local hotel and spent the night there.

3) So, here we sit now, again at Midway. We had to leave the hotel at noon and our flight is not until close to 5PM. Not my idea of a place to spend time this holiday.

Hopefully my next post will be about our time in Houston. Hopefully.....

Snow in Wisconsin

I got a request from a non-snowbound relative for pictures of the snow we have and boy, do we have it. We cannot remember a December in the 20 years that we have lived here with so much snow. Actually, for most of the last 10, we were lucky to have snow at Christmas. This top one is the backyard, after our most recent 4 inch or more snowfall. Hard to tell how much we really got that day since the 20 MPH winds were blowing it around so much. The predicition is for more again tomorrow and Wednesday. UGH!! Enough already!

This is the driveway prior to snowblowing. You can see Ben's car in the distance buried also.

Hope this brings the winter spirit to all reading this. We wish you all happy holidays as we head to warmer pastures. Talk to you next year!