Life's A Trip

Took a little road trip to Tulsa this past weekend. Decided to take the Hardrock Hotel & Casino up on their offer of a free room. Because who doesn’t like free? This is the third time I’ve gotten a free room from them so I must really be rockin those penny slot machines! My hubby is jealous that I keep getting all the free stuff when I’ve only been three times (2 of those were free) and I don’t spend very much money when I go. I can’t help it if I’m just lucky like that…

I also think that’s exactly why I keep getting rooms – I don’t spend enough money and they want to suck me in. Let them keep trying - I’ll enjoy the free rooms and continue to play with pennies. Win for me!

No roadtrip is complete without junk food!

90% of my trip was spent like this, tending to the childrens

On our way we made a detour to Eufaula to meet a contractor. That’s something we haven’t had very good luck with – good, reliable contractors. I think they know it’s hard for people like us, who don’t live near the area, to really stay on top of their work and it’s easy for them to do shoddy work because no one is around to check it. And once the job’s done – well, good luck getting them to come out again to fix it.

So the guy we met was outrageously overpriced and I was a little bit irritated that we had to meet him in the first place. Just give us a quote over the phone, like everyone else. Which I’m sure it was a tactic to size us up and see what we’d be willing to pay – which was definitely not what he was asking. I don’t know what made him think we had the kind of money he wanted. Dude, we’re driving a plain little car, have two kids in daycare and shop at Ross – how much free money do you think we have?

Our property is lakefront but nothing is really lakefront – the Corp of Engineers owns all the land that actually meets the lake. So there’s a little distance between where our land sits and our boat dock. It’s sloped land too, so you can’t actually see the dock from our land – you have to walk down to it. Since we’ve had so much rain, the lake is really up so we decided to check on the dock.

I was walking behind my husband – this is a safety strategy I adopted shortly after buying the land, I always let him go first because he could tolerate a snake bite better than I could - when he laughs and says “Well, the docks still there.” And I laughed too because it was funny to think it wouldn’t be. But then two steps later he says “Our walkway is gone.”

What?! WHAT?! And I run up to look for myself – like I’m gonna see something he didn’t. And it was gone. There are only two options to what happened – it was stolen by someone that knew we didn’t frequent the land or use the dock or it was so poorly constructed that when the lake came up it was pushed, crumpled and pulled off the land and sank. It was poorly constructed. We’d actually gotten quotes to fix it. Which makes it even more painful because we know exactly how much it’s going to cost.

Something kinda important is missing...

It wasn’t exactly what we wanted to find, but what can you do? So we just let it go and rolled on. We took the girls down to the pool once we got there and I started a water gun fight, although I totally got blasted. There’s just something super fun about ganging up on Mom. Especially when she gives strict instructions to not hit her in the face. Silly me, I didn’t know that direction actually translated to “My face is your number one target, ignore every other area of my body and just go for the face.” And that’s got to be the best spot because then you get to watch her makeup run down her face. And who doesn’t love that?

Isn't that lovely?

The next day we visited the Oklahoma Aquarium. It was pretty good – we got to see a lot of fish and watched the sharks being fed.

Did someone say shark?!?

I have to admit though, it really didn’t compare to the Texas State Aquarium. Of course, if I had my pick between having the best Aquarium or having the best football team…let Texas have the Aquarium!