Texas

We made a u-turn from Oklahoma and we are back in Texas! We came back so Bill could have his stent from the kidney stone surgery removed at the VA hospital where it would be free. Well as you may guess that didn’t work out. The VA does not do anything quickly even when Bill called everyone and made sure he was following the correct procedure.

We decided to use our other insurance and happily the stent was removed within 24 hrs of our first phone call. Amazing! Thank you Dr. Schiffman!

The VA told Bill his stent wouldn’t even be looked at for removal until 3 weeks and the doctor who removed Bill’s stent said they remove them within 3 days after surgery! I think the VA doesn’t know the difference between weeks and days?! Bill would have been miserable and could possibly have developed other complications. Ugh! The main thing is Bill is doing great and he is almost back to 100%.

Right after Bill’s stent removal we went to Rockport for some more fun in the sun! While we were there, Jennifer’s dad caught a 40-inch, 22 pound Redfish! It was huge!


We had a lot of fun in Rockport – the kids had 2 cousins who were visiting from Maryland to play with too, which was great!

We’ve also been doing some sightseeing in Texas. We went to the Stanzel Model Airplane Museum in Columbus, which was really cool!


We also had ice cream after a tour of the Blue Bell Creamery in Brenham – which is the best ice cream ever!

Ardmore, OK

We headed to Oklahoma next. Bill’s parents live in Ardmore, and we are currently staying here. We enjoyed swimming in Lake Murray and visiting the city water park, which had this cool whirlpool area that pulled and pushed you around the pool!! That was a blast!

This has been a crazy visit though -- Bill has been to the ER twice!! He was having excruciating pain from his kidney stone. He found out he had a kidney stone while we were still in Yuma, but the pain went away, so he didn’t worry about it.

Well, it let us know that you don’t forget about a kidney stone! If you don’t pass it, it will come back to haunt you!! Luckily, we were here with family and he was able to have surgery to remove it and now he has to have some follow up stuff done, but he is doing so much better. We’re not quite sure if we will actually get going on our RV adventure or not…just kidding! We will be here through July 4th and then we head South, back to Texas and to the VA hospital in Houston for Bill’s follow up care.


In the meantime, we are enjoying our visit. Along with Mike and Connie (Bill’s parents), Dan (Bill's brother) and his wife Cindy have visited. Also, Mike and Connie have Spencer and Gavin (Bill’s sister’s sons) here and the kids love it!

Paul and Gavin hit it off right away – they both love WII and Legos, so needless to say, we don’t see them much! As for Anna and Noah, they follow Spencer around everywhere. Spencer is 14 and surprisingly doesn’t mind the kids tagging along to catch crickets, frogs, etc. He also takes them on tractor rides, which is the “Okie roller coaster”!


Anna has also been cooking a lot. She and grandpa have made an apricot pie, strawberry cake, and macaroni salad! She also enjoys helping with making meals -- maybe she'll be a chef someday and I won't have to cook anymore! Woohoo!

Medina Lake

From Rockport, we traveled to Medina Lake which is west of San Antonio. It is a beautiful area with lots of wildlife. You can't imagine all the deer running around - and they are so tame!

While we were at Medina Lake, we traveled about an hour to the deer lease that Bill is on and hung out for a day with Jennifer’s Dad. We had a fun time, but we also discovered a new creature (see weird animal picture)! Really, we didn’t discover a new creature, just baby OWLS – they are so weird looking and stinky too! Ew!

We also went into San Antonio and spent a day on the river with Jennifer’s parents who were there for a conference. We rode the river boats and visited the Alamo and had a great time! San Antonio is really fun, but it was very busy this time of year, too.

Our last adventure while there was on Father's Day, we went to see the new Toy Story 3 movie in 3D. The kids loved it! It made me (Jennifer) cry a little too - so sweet!

Rockport

After Tombstone, we drove to Rockport, TX to stay with Jennifer’s family from June 9th-16th. While we were there, we celebrated Noah’s 3rd birthday!! He is such a big boy now!

We also enjoyed going to the beach, water park, and fishing on the pier!

Bill competed in his first kayak fishing tournament on June 13th and he got 7th place!! Yippee! On our last day, Bill surprised us all when he caught a SHARK off the pier! Ugh! Scary but cool!!