Natalie and Me Post #3

This is a picture of Natalie with two of her step-cousins. Next to Natalie is Teagan, and she is 10, almost 11. Sydney is to the far right and she is 8, almost 9. Yes, both of her parents are tall, and Natalie, who already wishes she was taller (because it would be better for swimming), felt even shorter. We are at Lazer Zone, which is a small indoor play place with play structures for Braeden, and arcade type games for the older kids.

We had a lazy day on Monday, our last day in Boston. Natalie and her step-cousins all spent the night in the basement, so she didn't get much sleep. We didn't leave the house until after lunch to go to Lazer Zone. We then went to Anthony's house to meet up with him.

We got there a few minutes before 4pm, while Anthony was still walking back from his class that ended around then. Natalie and I walked around a little, and she really liked this bridge and wanted me to take a picture of her on it. It's easy to see her, of course, with her bright neon yellow sweatshirt.

We had originally planned to take Anthony out to dinner, but he changed plans on us. He is interested in studying abroad next year, and there was a meeting about that from 5-6:30pm. Natalie didn't want to go visit after that because she wanted to go to bed early, so instead we decided to go for ice cream so we could get back in time for his meeting.

He looked up ice cream places on his phone and found a Ben and Jerry's relatively close by. He was terrible at giving me directions. I kept having to turn around again and again. His friend Julia, who also came with us, took the phone from him and gave me directions instead, and she did a much better job. :) We eventually drove up to a movie theatre with nothing else around. Julia was the one who figured out that the Ben and Jerry's must be inside the movie theatre. Apparently, they have movie theatres where you can go eat without buying a movie ticket, which is what we did. That's why I had to take this picture of Anthony with Natalie in front of the Ben and Jerry's sign.

I was sad all over again when we dropped Anthony off for his meeting. We won't see him again until Christmas vacation. We will most likely not see him for Spring Break either. He is weaning himself away from us slowly. :(

Meanwhile, Lisa was delivering her stepkids to their various activities. Derek had left on a business trip. Teagan went to gymnastics at 5:15pm, and Griffin went to football practice at 6pm. We met Lisa back at her house with Sydney and Braeden after they went to get cheese pizza for dinner. Braeden put on a couple of his sisters' headbands and said "cheese" for me when I took this picture. Teagan told me earlier in the day that Braeden gets mad when they take their headbands back from him. He really loves wearing the headbands.

After dinner, Sydney's mom picked her up and was going to pick up her siblings to bring them back to her house. It was really great to be able to see them all this weekend.

Yesterday was a very long travel day for Natalie and me. We got up at 5am. Derek had told me to leave by 5:30am because one of the lanes on the Massachusetts Turnpike was going to be closed. Natalie popped right out of bed, which surprised me, but then she was grumpy for the rest of the day. We were on the road by 5:20am. We got to the car rental place in good time and we were at the airport by around 6:30am. We found out while we were having breakfast that our flight was delayed 20 minutes, due to our plane being delayed getting in.

We arrived in Houston late, but my sister Cynthia was there to pick us up. Poor thing had to drive around and around waiting for us because they wouldn't let her stay in the pick-up area for any length of time. We went to lunch at Chick-Fil-A, went to her house to get Natalie's school backpack and our car, and then we were on our way home. We didn't get home until around 5:30pm. I was glad to see Natalie able to sleep in the car. We were both exhausted and even I was in bed by 8:30pm. It's good to be home.