My Vacation

I have had the great privilege of hanging out with four great boys while their parents are away on a little trip. They were a great excuse to take a couple of much-needed days off of work. Today was day 1 of "my vacation," and something happened that made me laugh a lot at myself.

This story should also give you a pretty good idea of how much I talk to myself in my head!

Before Kristy left on her trip her iPod just quit working and nothing she/we tried would fix it. Going on a long trip without your iPod is just not a good idea, so we found a temporary solution. And, I have been looking for a reason to get to the Apple store so I offered to take hers in to see if they could figure out what was wrong with it. Now, if you've never been to the Apple store they have an "iPod bar" staffed by self-proclaimed "geniuses." Since I was in need of the services of an iPod genius that's where I headed. Sounds logical, right?

Well, I approach the iPod bar and one of the geniuses rudely asked me if I had an appointment. I replied, "no, I didn't know I needed one." He proceeded to tell me to go talk to one of the people in orange shirts about setting up an appointment. Please note that there were 17 (I counted) geniuses working in the store and about 10 customers. So, I'm thinking alright dude I'll make an appointment to talk to you. I go over to an orange guy and he tells me the earliest appointment is 1:15 (it was 12:00 at the time). I asked him if he was joking and he asked me if I had eaten lunch yet, and I didn't laugh. Normally, it probably wouldn't have bothered me but I didn't want to get stuck in Southlake when I had to be back to pick up Parker from school. I calmly left the store and did a little retail therapy while I thought about my options.

About fifteen minutes later I returned to the store ready to let them have it. I mean don't they know that I own just about everything Apple has to offer? Do they know that I tell everyone I know how great Apple is? Do they know I have a blog, that maybe five people read, and I will tell everyone on the whole internet how horribly treated I was? Do they know I'm not afraid to pick up a phone and call Steve Jobs and let him know what is happening in his stores? (Yeah right, I'm totally terrified to pick up the phone to call anybody!!) I just need someone to look at an iPod, not do brain surgery!

So, I'm so ready to be tough and when I walk back in the store the guy who helped me earlier walked straight to the iPod bar and talked to a different guy, who agreed to meet with me right away. In about 5 minutes he had diagnosed the iPod as having a completely empty battery. It just needed to be charged. Apparently, I had not been patient enough in my earlier attempts to charge it. And, perhaps I learned an important lesson - slow down, be patient, watch expectantly - you never know what might pop up on the screen.

The moral of the story is, I love Apple again. You should all buy their stuff and not be afraid to go in and talk to the geniuses when you have a question - they know their stuff, just make sure you have an appointment!

I also wanted to document the last couple days with the boys:

On Saturday, Landry was kind of missing his Momma so he walked around in some of her shoes for awhile:


Then, we watched Parker's second baseball game of the day.


Then, we went swimming, but there's no pictures of that.

Then, on Sunday we went to church. After church, Parker and I went to Six Flags for a little while. He didn't know where we were going, this was his face once he found out:


Here are some other pictures from the day:






Tonight, we had another baseball game and we've got a full house again! It's been a great time so far, I can't wait to see what tomorrow brings!