Holly had some time off and wanted to go somewhere.  After batting around a few ideas, she settled on doing a couple of days at Great Wolf Lodge near Dallas.  Ivy even invited her friend Hanley along. 

I’ve seen ads for this place, and even checked it out online, but I was a little skeptical about spending two days there – especially for the price.  

Turns out, we LOVED it!  

The indoor water park is excellent.  I was expecting some small kiddie rides and lame water slides.  Nope!  They have several water slides and some are quite big and fast…even a little scary!  Plus a wave pool, and lazy river, and a treehouse type thing with lots of ways to squirt water on the people below.  It was impressive!  

As for the hotel itself, it was very nice, too.  Our room was big and spacious, with separate sleeping areas for the kids and grown-ups (kids have bunk beds in a enclave).   The rooms were clean and fully stacked with towels and bath items and all the usual hotel stuff.  Downstairs were 2 restaurants and 4 bars, all of which served some tasty food.  We had the buffet breakfast and dinner, and both were good.  No complaints whatsoever from us about the food!  It was all good.  They even have characters in costume come out and sing a song and take pictures with the kids.  

There were plenty of other things to do, as well, such as the 4D movie rides, an arcade, and the Magic Quest.  Surprisingly, the girls didn’t really care much for the Magic Quest…. but I did!  LOL.  I was walking all over the hotel gathering clues and interacting with the Paintings on the wall, statues, pedastals, trees, and everything else that was rigged to respond to the ‘magic wand’ that they give you when you register.  If you find a specific painting on the wall and point your wand at it…it lights up and begins speaking to you!  Or if you find a statue of a wolf, it would howl.   I even made a friend or two as I was walking around – adults, mind you – who were gathering clues.  We kept crossing each other’s paths, so we joked about how silly (but fun) this was, and also shared tips and clues on where to find stuff.  It really enjoyed it.  

I also enjoyed the Zip-Line, Rope-Course thing outside.  The girls totally chickened out on that.  After I climbed up I began to see why.  It was indeed kind of scary!  But I managed to climb all 3 levels and do nearly every course.  Yes, it was scary even though you know you’re safe and won’t fall to your death.  The most frightening thing of all is stepping off of the platform and zip lining to the other side.  That step-off is kind of nerve racking.  It takes some courage.   And if you don’t step off with some speed then you are likely to slow down and stop in mid ‘zip’.  Which is what happened to me.  That was uncomfortable and frightening.  But the lady on the ground below said, “Just swing your feet back and forth!”  So I did, and eventually puttered to the other side.  I learned my lesson – get up some speed and step off the platform into thin air!  From then on, zip lining was fast and fun.    Below is a 3D video (not mine) of the rope course.  It gives you a bit of an idea of what it is like… 

Overall, we give Great Wolf Lodge 5 out of 5 stars.  Totally loved it!  A bit pricey, yes, and even the food and drinks are a bit over priced.  But that is how it goes in a environment like that.  It is sort of like a cruise-ship that is on land.  Totally fun and relaxing, with plenty of things to do.  You don’t even have to leave the resort for 2 days (which we didn’t). 

For a long time, I’ve suggested we get some chickens for our yard.  Holly always kind of dismissed the idea.  I never really pursued it very strongly.  Mainly because we had a dog who would love to eat those tasty roving yard meals (Rusty).  So we did not have chickens.  But Rusty died in 2017, and then…inexplicably…one day in early 2018, Holly suddenly said, “I want to get some chickens!”  

Whaaaat???  

Something bit her and infected her with the chicken bug, and suddenly she was exploring all the different varieties of chickens that were out there.  Typical of her, she delved deep into all of the thousands of variations, textures, style, behaviors and possibilities…way beyond anything that even remotely interesting to me…and settled on a few detailed breeds that seemed to fit out lifestyle.  It wasn’t hard to twist my arm and say “YES” to getting some chickens and even building a chicken hut of some sort. 

After some deliberation, we finally decided to destroy our current storage shed, and build a new storage shed slash/chicken house.  It is two things combined into one.  Our current storage shed was showing signs of decay, so it seemed a good time to replace it with something better. 

But therein, began a whole soap opera that I never expected…never saw coming… 

I assumed Jose, our live-in Honduran helper, would be eager to help build the chicken house.  He is usually eager to help with pretty much anything around the house.  But I was very wrong.  He was inexplicably irritated with the whole notion of building a chicken house.  So much so that it was a problem right from the very start.  It would be a couple of months before I finally discovered the reason why.  He was mad that we were building a house for chickens and not for him!  Whaaaaat??  I also discovered about that same time that he had a new relationship with a woman and was planning to get married. So he had one foot out of the door, and building a chicken house was not really conducive to any of his plans.   So we were totally NOT in the same mind, and therefore we clashed from day one on constructing this house for chickens. 

But, to back up to the start….

On May 15th, Holly bought the schematics, and we began working the next day.  I hired a friend of Jose to help us get started.   Luis is skilled at carpentry (well, more than Jose and I) and had lots of cool equipment such as a nail gun.  So the 3 of us were able to get MUCH work done in one day.  Still, it was super hot outside and by 2 o’clock and we were all exhausted.  So we called it a day.  

Over the next couple of weeks, Jose and I continued to work on the chicken house, but it wasn’t a pleasant experience.    One day we clashed so hard that we both just dropped our tools and walked away.   We didn’t talk again for a few days.  We managed to work together again one more time….but this time when we clashed, there was yelling and arguing…and I finally found out what he was ACTUALLY irritated about.  He was mad that we were spending money on a chicken house, instead of spending that money to build a better shelter for him.    Then I also learned that he had a relationship growing on the side with an American (nationalized) woman who was going to marry him.  Luis was actually his future son-in-law (his girlfriend’s daughter’s husband).  

So, in short, this whole project went sideways.  A whole other issue was in play. 

One day, after a nasty conflict with Jose, I told him to just pack his junk up and move out.  He actually agreed.  So on July 28th (day after my birthday) he began moving into a new apartment with his girlfriend.  Even THAT went sideways as there was a guy who pulled out a gun ….and police came …and a person arrested.  The 29th was spent mostly dealing with the emotional aftermath of that contentious night.  But, Sunday the 30th, we completed the move.  He was moved out.  Honestly, it was weird to me.  Having someone live with us for 3 years, and then suddenly he is gone… it was unpleasant.  Not a happy ending.  It would take some adjusting.  

Meanwhile, I finished the chicken house enough so that the hens could walk around in it.  It has been slow and boring.  And unbearably hot (temps in the upper 90’s, sometimes 107 heat index).  Honestly, I didn’t have any motivation or desire to complete it.   But, I finally pushed through and got the chicken house done enough that chickens could actually live, eat, and roost.  Soon, hopefully, lay eggs, too.  

Success!  The chickens seem to be happy and flourishing.  But, honestly, this whole chicken house construction has been a bad experience.  And it still isn’t quite done.  But I will admit it is very pleasant sitting and watching the chickens peck about in the yard.   

As of Saturday the 11th, we discovered that one of our hens is actually a rooster!  I heard it crowing that morning.  This was not supposed to happen.  We’ve heard it crowing every morning since.  Oh my, what do we do now??    Omg, this project is never ending…

Update: Holly took the rooster back to the chicken-gittin’ place and exchanged it.  LOL.  Didn’t know you could do that.  She got 2 more hens.   

After many headaches, I’ve finally got this blog back on-line.  My account with HostGator had been hacked multiple times to the point that Hostgator shut our account down and forced us to clean it ($300 or so).  Instead of getting a ‘professional cleaning’, I opted to just close out the account all-together and start over.  But I chose NOT to ditch Hostgator and go with some other service, instead we stayed with them and set up a newer, less-expensive account.  

Moving this blog over to the new account was not easy.  It took several days.  I did as much as I could, but finally reached a max on my knowledge of how to make all this crap work!  So, I hand it over to Holly who promptly fixed the database and image problems.  

We’re back!  Better than ever.  🙂  

Well, since we’re pretty much living in a constant state of remodeling, let’s give Ivy’s room a makeover too!  She had been complaining that it was like a ‘kid’s’ room, and that is true with the cartoony animals I painted on the wall when she was a baby.  

So with a lot of sweat, frustration, aggravation, learning new techniques, and lots of money, Ivy now has an Industrial loft type room.  We used faux-brick paneling for the walls and ‘german-schmear’ technique to make it look aged.  I had never done that before, so I think I schmeared it on a bit too thick.  Still, it came out looking really good.  

Also put together a bunkbed with the bottom bed being a futon.  So you can sleep on it, or sit on it and watch TV.  Really nice!  We’ve been getting a lot of use out of this already.  

Threw in an old, near-antique piece of furniture from Jane’s old house.  I think that came from April’s old bedroom.  I’m guessing it is about 25 years old at least. 

All in all, it looks good!  Everyone is happy with this remodel.  

Impact Church contacted me one day with an extraordinary surprise – Ivy had been selected as one of a handful of kids they would send to a week-long summer camp near Austin.  It was all paid for and everything.  All she had to do was go!  

I had been wanting to send Ivy to a summer camp, but it is very expensive in some places.  So I was thinking maybe later when she is a teenager.  But this opportunity came up and, of course, I said yes.  But would Ivy be okay with being so far away…207 miles away…from home for a week?  I wasn’t sure.  

Surprisingly, she said yes right away.  As time to actually leave for camp got closer, she began to feel a bit worried and apprehensive, but we assured her she’d probably love it.   

So June 18th arrived, her bags were packed, I took her to the church, and …. adios!  Off she went to the awesome Camp of the Hills in Marble Falls, Texas nearly 4 hours away from home. 

No pictures!   I contacted her leader to see if she made through the first night.  Yep!  No problems at all.  And she was busy from then on with zip-lining, canoeing, fishing, eating, and all the other stuff they had to do from morning to bedtime.  So we didn’t have hardly anymore contact with her until she finally returned.  

Upon her return on Saturday… “I want junk food!!”  She went straight from drop-off at the church to Sonic and got herself a slushy.  

 All in all, summer camp was a big success.  So much so that she says she wants to be a camp counselor when she get older.   That’s what I wanted to hear!  Good deal.   

Thank  you, Impact Church of Houston, for sending Ivy to summer camp.  🙂 🙂  🙂  

4th grade is done!  

Thanks to Ray and Becky for going to the dinner and show with us!  Ivy’s school play and then dinner at Cafe Lux afterward.  That was the best chicken salad sandwich I’ve ever tasted!  

Super cool that Ivy won a bicycle, too!!  Kids with perfect attendance were in a drawing for a bike…and they drew her name!  

2 1/2 years later, we finally completed Jane’s house move.  By that I mean we finally eliminated the remaining pieces of furniture and stuff that did not get moved to the new house.  All of this went into storage for awhile, with the anticipation that it would sold or donated somewhere.  So today was that day.  

The yard sale was not a big success, but I think mainly because didn’t advertise it very well…plus, no one is ever expecting to see a Yard Sale on Houston avenue (I’ve never seen one until today!).   I think we would’ve unloaded almost all of it if we had been in a better location or better situation such as a multi-family yard sale, for example, or even a ‘pulga’ (flea market). 

Thank you, Jose, for helping out so much with moving stuff to the corner…and then moving the leftovers to The Salvation Army.  

For the me, the most important thing was that we FINALLY completed the gigantic house move of Jane Sommer.  It was a job clearing out the old house, moving stuff to the new house, and then storing other valuable stuff that she didn’t particularly want anymore.  While everyone else considered the project done in 2016 with the move to the new house, I still had a storage unit crammed to ceiling with stuff to deal with.  Today we dealt with it!  And it is done.  Hurray!!!  

Among the stuff we unloaded were dozens of stuffed animals.  They were scattered out on our living room floor for awhile.  Can you find the real animal amidst all of these?  

This particular blog actually took place over many months.  I never knew exactly when to start writing about it because it was so multifaceted and long-term…so exhausting….experience.  So I just waited until we were finished and then put this blog post together.  

Oh my, what an adventure.  We survived Hurricane Harvey with no damage at all even though the flood waters came frighteningly close (3 blocks).  So that was a sigh of relief,…but floods came to our house anyway on the night of January >>>>>>>> Ivy was in the master bedroom playing on her iPad,  I was in Ivy’s room watching TV, and Holly was in the living room also watching TV.   I heard a ‘pop’ that sounded unusual, but not terribly loud or destructive.  I thought, “What was that?” and listened for a moment.  I didn’t hear anything else, so I just dismissed it and continued watching TV. 

I move into the living room and join Holly in her TV watching, when about 45 minutes later, Ivy walks up and says, “Why is there water on the floor?”

“Huh?  Where?”  

“Over there, by the washing machine.” 

I check it out.  Yes, lots of water on the floor.  Suddenly, I put it all together in my head.  Oh crap!  That’s what I heard.  Water must have poured out of the washing machine somehow!  Sure enough, it was slowly flooding the kitchen, dining room, and both bedrooms.  So much flooding, in fact, that it destroyed the drywall in 3 rooms and cost (as we would eventually discover) about $10,000 in repairs. 

Long story short, insurance covered a tremendous amount of the cost of repairs.   But we decided to just go ahead and replace the entire floor throughout the whole house.  I always hated the carpeting in the master bedroom and Ivy’s bedroom anyway.  It was dirty and ugly and a pain in the butt to clean.  I was totally okay with removing ALL carpeting from the house completely.  Holly agreed, so we set our minds of finding a wood floor that we both liked.  We eventually decided upon wood-tile (ceramic tile that looks like wood).  

Our lives were upended during this time.  We were living in a house that was being reconstructed, which meant sleeping wherever and whenever.  It was very unpleasant at times.   The thing that bothered me most was the loud blowing fans which supposedly dried out the water damage.  It was either that or replace the drywall.   That would’ve been very expensive, so I just sucked it up and listened to extremely loud fans blowing for about 5 days.  Sections of our house were sanctioned off for days (24 hours a day).  For me, it was horrible, since I can’t stand ‘white noise’.  I didn’t sleep much at all during this time.  It was exhausting. 

Sealing off rooms and blowing LOUD fans for 3 days non-stop

As always, with home repair, there were unexpected surprised we had to deal with.  The biggest one was the fact our floor in the dining room and kitchen wasn’t completely level.  The guys literally had to cut our kitchen door out and lift it up about 1 inch to make it a match.  

Scaffolding next door

Juan tearing up the master bedroom

Workspace outside of the kitchen

Dogs hiding from all the noise and chaos

Guys tearing up Ivy’s room

Guys tearing up Ivy’s room

Master bedroom carpet all gone!

Drying out the drywall

Living room floor nearly done

Living room Done!

Now start on the kitchen.

Lots of problems with the kitchen floor.

Kitchen floor done!

While we were at it, I said “Let’s just repaint the kitchen, dining room, and living room.”  Holly agreed.  So, thus, began that project which I and Jose did all by ourselves.  

Then Holly says, “Let’s redo Ivy’s room!”  Okay, but how?  Eventually she determined it would be a ‘loft’ sort of theme with faux brick walls and wood paneling. 

There were plenty of days where everyone was cranky with each other.  There were a thousand opportunities and reasons to be cranky with each other during this time.  Always over some details, or some notion that another person wasn’t pulling their own weight in the situation.  But we made it through, and even managed to have some laughs with people along the way.   Especially from the house-builders next door about 10 feet away.  We even literally fed material from my kitchen window to their kitchen window…. that’s how close we are! 

Crystal clowning around

Hey! Who is outside my dining room window?

Juan and his big hat

Big house next door

The alley between our houses

Our house

Grape Vine growing good!

Barbara Bush died today. 🙁

What an awesome women she was! Even though she was born in NYC, she seems have fully become a strong, tough Texas woman. She got married to George while still a teen (17 or 18, I think) and raised 6 kids together, with a husband and two of her sons becoming Presidents of the USA and Governors of Texas and Florida.

As the media reported on her death at her home on the west side of Houston, I was reminded that not only does she live near us here in Houston, but we’re also cousins to some (far) degree, but didn’t remember exactly how. It propelled me to dust off the ancestry.com membership and explore the family tree once again.

Long story short, here the lineage from George W Bush via his MOTHER Barbara Pierce-Bush to Edumnd Dutton, our shared Great Grandfather on my MOTHER’S side of the family.

Edmund had two sons – Peter and Hugh. Hugh is my great grandfather, while Peter is the Bush’s great grandfather . The genealogy gets confusing right here become BOTH Hugh and Peter had sons named John. Whaaaat? Why did they do that? I don’t know. But John #1 is my great grandfather, while John #2 is George Bush’s great grandfather. Here is the straight line from GWBush to John Dutton #2, and here’s the straight line from us (Ivy and myself) to Edmund Dutton, our main intersection with the Bush family.

Mother’s Side:

• Edmund Dutton
• Hugh Dutton (brother Peter Dutton)
• John Dutton (not the same John Dutton as Barbara Bush’s great grandfather, which is Peter Dutton’s son with the same name John Dutton)
• Peter Dutton
• Peter Dutton
• Eleanor Dutton-Brereton (mother of William Brereton executed with Anne Boleyn)
• Elizabeth Brereton
• Margaret Mainwaring
• Sir George Mainwaring (member of Parliment)
• Margaret Mainwaring
• John Baker
• Robert Baker
• Joseph Baker
• Joseph Baker
• Hannah Baker
• Margaret Talbot
• Thomas Grisell
• Euphemia Grisell Townsend
• Elizabeth Watson
• Captain George Walker (fought in the rebellion against the British)
• Jesse Walker
• Jesse John Walker
• Melissa Walker
• Polk Walker
• Virgil Walker
• Mabel Walker-Downing
• Shirley June Downing (mom)
• Joseph Dutton
• Ivy Dutton

Along the way, I discovered a couple of notable people in my family tree including Captain George Walker who fought in the revolutionary war against the British (here is his will and some more info), and Sir George Mainwaring who was a knight and a member of Parliment of England.
Also, in the family tree is Eleanor Dutton-Brereton who is mother of Elizabeth (my 19th Great Grandmother) and William Brereton who lost his head! He was one of the guys accused of having an affair with Anne Boleyn and executed.

……………………………………………………………

Interestingly enough, it turns out we’re related to George H. Bush as well.

Here is George W Bush’s straight-line lineage via his FATHER George H. Bush all the way back to his 17th Great Grandfather Henry Spencer.

And here is my line to Henry Spencer:

1. Henry Spencer
2. Thomas Spencer – brother John, —> Bush lineage goes here.
3. William Spencer
4. Julian Spencer
5. Marjory Wylmer
6. Katherine Underhill
7. John Garner
8. Thomas Garner
9. John Gardner
10. Thomas Gardner
11. Parish Gardner
12. William Gardner
13. Mary Gardner (married James Downing)
14. Samuel Downing
15. James Downing
16. Jasper Downing or Manora “Nora” C Downing/Hendry (brother & Sister, not sure which is the parent)
17. Landus Earl Downing
18. Shirley June Downing (Dutton)
19. Joseph Dutton
20. Ivy Dutton Superstar

Henry Spencer is my 16th great grandfather. He had several children including John and Thomas. Thomas is my 15th great grandfather, whereas John is where George Bush 1 & 2 come from. I’ve published this straight-line lineage in a previous blog here.

………………………………………………

And back in the present day and time, I just made this little map showing where we live in relation to George and Barbara Bush in Houston. They live about 5 miles from our house, and just right down the street from where Holly works (she could probably see their house from one of the upper floors in her building). I drive through there frequently as I go to the YMCA, so it is a familiar territory for me, although it is a very wealthy neighborhood and some of it is gated. Coincidentally, this is the same neighborhood that Lady Gaga rented a house for $10,000 as she stayed and performed during SuperBowl 2017. I wonder if she waved hello to her neighbors George and Barbara?