Family Vacation in Dallas

Jennie and Mac and I are now back to our normal schedules following a week of vacation. We packed up in Richard and Cherrie's Nissan Armada SUV and headed toward the Lone Star State for some much-needed time away.

As many of you know, we had originally planned on driving to Princeton, New Jersey; when those plans fell apart, the much shorter, much less daunting trip to Dallas was invented. I had worried about Mac's ability to sit in a child car seat for long periods of time, so a 4 hour or so trip sounded more doable than a 20-hour one. As it turns out, my worries were unfounded — Mac did great. We had to make a few stops in our traveling to stretch the little legs, but that was expected. I am very proud of her.

We stayed in Denton, just north of Dallas and Fort Worth. In Denton, we stopped into a Circuit City and did something really great for the health of our marriage — we bought a Garmin StreetPilot c550 GPS. This thing suctions to your windshield and tells you turn-by-turn how to get to your destination. It made the rest of our driving time mostly enjoyable!

In Dallas, we visited Dealey Plaza, where president John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, nearly 2 decades before Jennie and I were born. On the sixth floor of the nearby Texas School Book Depository building, where assassin Lee Harvey Oswald perched and shot JFK, there is a museum that walks you through the entire set of events and even explains the different conspiracy theories. Jennie and I learned a lot about this very sad day in our nation's history.

Of course, we did some shopping in Dallas and Denton. Jennie had to make her stop at the Container Store. We also ate at the Cheesecake Factory. Yes, we're aware there is now one in Tulsa, but it seems every time we happen by that place, the line is stacked right on out to 71st street; the one in Dallas wasn't nearly that busy for whatever reason.

On our way back home, we stopped in Oklahoma City to visit the Bombing Memorial there. It was very heartwarming and sad at the same time to see the things people have placed on the chain link fence in memory of loved ones.

We took a few photos (though not as many as I should have), like this one:



We also created a little video (mostly of driving) so we could remember Mac's first out of state trip:


Dallas Trip 2007 from Tim Morgan on Vimeo.

All in all, this was one of the best vacations ever — probably because our little family is 50% larger now. Though Mac won't remember any of the trip, the bonding that took place during that week of us together on the road is irreplaceable.