Early in the week, I spent a couple of days in Dallas for work.
Lafayette has direct flights to Dallas, and I traveled with two other people.
Despite being back to back to back in line, and all three of our bags going onto the conveyor belt in sequence, my bag didn't make it to Lafayette on our flight.
How hard is it to get a bag on a direct flight when the customer checked in 2 hours before the flight?
C'mon American. No wonder your industry is failing.
Oh well. I got back safe enough to be able to type this, and that's all that matters.
We got back from the big D too late in the day to justify going to work, so I grabbed Riley and headed out to the airport to visit his Poppy.
It was kind of a bummer at first because it was raining hard and he had to just look at the helicopters from a distance.
Once things cleared up, he was able to play pilot for a little while.
Then he really put his brain to work making connections between the poster Poppy gave him and the aircraft on the ground.
Later in the week, he learned some new ways to use his slide when Presley, (daughter of Joan's co-worker/loyal blog reader/state farm product, Lesley) stopped by to hang out.
Bright and early Saturday morning, we headed over to the zoo with Anna and her Daddy.
Since she's 10 months older, she gave him a guided tour and started off by showing him the "fwamigos"
Then, as is his custom, they posed on the concrete wildlife statues.
and there was plenty of time for climbing and sliding. Riley even inspired Anna with the courage to go down the big slide, which she had feared in the past.
But there's such a thin line between courage and recklessness.
The highlight for the adults was that the baby lemur is growing up but can still get out of the cage, thus allowing the kids a closer look than normal.
Later in the day we made the mistake of going to Once Upon a Child, not knowing that there was some huge sale attracting hordes of psychos willing to shed all civility to save a dollar on some used clothes.
To get away from that madness, we walked a few doors down and visited uncle Eli, who is a personal trainer at Snap Fitness.
Riley acted like he actually knew what to do in a gym (unlike me), and even got in a good spinning workout on one of the bikes, but not the way that most people do.
Saturday evening, Mommy and Daddy went to a movie and dinner for our 7th anniversary while the young 'un got to hang out with and show off for Ms Stevie.
I remember being younger and how having a nice girl paying attention to you could actually keep you up past bedtime. Oh, glory days gone.
Sunday morning, he joined us for our annual anniversary breakfast, which has moved from IHOP to Broken Egg to Meche's.
He still can't seem to grasp the concept that, when you weigh 20 lbs, you don't have to eat a whole donut hole in one bite. (especially when a nice Daddy has already ripped it in half for you)
He later demonstrated a skill he had been resisting-- holding our hands while walking.
He also did very well in riding every single escalator at the mall in search of t-shirts that fit him.
for a little variety, we'll close with a couple of videos.
It was kinda cool that his post sickness hoarseness coincided with him learning what a lion says. It was better earlier in the week, but this was still good.
And his new, self taught and entirely surprising trick of the week is opening doors. He closed himself in the laundry room and i sat on the other side of the door laughing at him while he banged on the door. Then, as if by magic, the handle turned and the door opened. And it wasn't a fluke because I then watched him to it 10 more times. Fortunately all of our exterior doors have knobs.
