Boy, you get away from this blog for a minute and suddenly 2 weeks have gone by. Our last week in Florida, we went on one last bike ride. I found a new bike trail in Panama City, Gayle's Trail, that sounded interesting and didn't cross many side streets. Unfortunately, after only about a mile, the trail was closed due to construction. I'm sure one of these days, Florida is going to be a nice place to visit, but right now it's a pain in the rear with all the construction that is going on.
So we turned around and went back to Conservation Park. We had intended to hike some of their trails, but found out they were bike-friendly. Once in a while, we got bogged down in deep sand, but for the most part it was a pretty nice ride - much smoother than the mountain bike trails around here. There were some swampy areas filled with green goo, but there were usually nice boardwalks built over them.
On the way home, we drove through Mississippi. I had big plans to tour Natchez, Vicksburg, and Jackson on the way home, but after being gone for 2 months, all we did was stop at the Pig & Pint for barbecue and continue on down the road. Good thing, because there were horrendous storms all up and down I-55. Luckily we skated through with only a few showers here and there. It was creepy driving past Perryville and seeing the debris lying along the highway from the tornado they'd had the night before (I'm pretty sure that's somebody's roof sitting on the grass).
It was weird to drive into town and see all the trees budding out, the flowers blooming, and the thermometer reading in the high 70's. The groundhog sure called the start of spring wrong for this part of the country. Of course, as I write this, the temperature has dropped 40 degrees and we have snow predicted for tomorrow. Oh well, it always snows at least once in March.
Never let it be said that grass grows under my feet. I did a load of laundry, rested up for a day and a half, and then got back in the car and headed to Kansas City. Baby Violet's birthday is coming up and I got her a robot kit. It was a dumb little thing I picked up at Walmart. Originally I thought it was a craft project, since you made the body of the robot from an aluminum can. I think Violet thought I was being a little cheap with her gift by giving her an empty DP can.
But then she pulled out the base of the robot, inserted the can, and turned it on. The robot has a little motor, so it can "walk" across the table. Its egg-shaped wheels give it a rock-n-roll gait - sort of goofy-looking, but she seemed to be fascinated with it. You can see Lincoln watching in the background. He stayed away until we all went into the kitchen for pizza and then he grabbed onto it. The next thing I knew, he and Violet were in a tug-of-war for possession.
We managed to wrestle the robot away from Lincoln, which did NOT make him happy (boy does he have a powerful set of lungs). Guess the next time I head to Walmart, I need to buy 2 robot kits.
Violet's birthday is coming up this month and she's having a Princess party. The girls are supposed to wear their favorite princess dress and the boys are dressing as super heroes. My sister went to Goodwill and bought an old prom dress for her costume. I think she's planning to be Rapunzel, but she might need to find some hair extensions to go with her dress.
I haven't seen my friends in a couple months, so we got together for lunch this week. Rather than just sit around eating and gossiping, we decided to play a card game called
Whist. Whist is a trick-taking game, like bridge or hearts, except the rules change every single hand. Even though I'm fairly savvy at games, almost everyone playing was a former math teacher, so the competition was pretty fierce. It was fun and extremely entertaining as we all kept forgetting what rule we were on. I'm guessing the next time we all get together, however, we'll just go back to meeting at the food court in the mall.
