Crochet Me Crazy

We drove into what turned out to be Grapevine, TX late Tuesday night. Dallas has a whole lot of suburbs that sort of blend into it so when I say we are going to what is Dallas to me is actually some suburb of it... We didn't really know anything about the place we were staying. We stayed at the Gaylord Texan which turned out to be a resort and convention center. This place was HUGE and by far the fanciest place we've ever stayed at. We were filled with dread the moment we saw it. I had our dog, Brindy, to deal with and I could tell this wasn't going to be easy. It took us 30 minutes to find the entrance to this place amid the parking areas and miriad of different entrances. The entrance was actually in the back where you wouldn't expect it to be. Then, we had to park and hike about 1/2 mile to our room! I don't know if I ended up taking a picture of this hall we had to walk down to get to our room or not, but I meant to. It looked like it went on forever with dozens and dozens of shandiliers hanging all down the hallway. The kids were completely mezmerized by the whole experience. Our room had a balcony that went out into the atrium which was the "riverwalk". It was really nice. You went out onto the balcony and it completely felt like you were outside but it was a cool 72 degrees all the time.


A look down from our balcony 


There was a complete riverwalk with fish and surrounded with beautiful gardens, shops, several restaurants....They just happened to be holding their Summerfest right now. They had planned childrens activities, crafts, facepainting, a petting zoo, live snake exhibit, model train exhibit, live butterfly exhibit, and a roping cowboy.


The snake exhibit at the hotel 


Alison with the roping cowboy at the hotel 

My childhood friend, Wendi, lives in Dallas so she came over and picked us up the first day we were there. We went swimming in her neighbors pool. Then, on Wednesday we decided we would leave Brindy over at her house so we didn't have to worry about keeping her hidden. Wendi came over to the hotel and we spent the day at the outdoor pool where they had waiters that waited on us and brought us drinks! (Maybe this place isn't so bad after all!) Jeff got back from his meetings and we all had dinner at one of the restaurants in the hotel. We decided we like it so much we wanted to lay around the pool again the next day while waiting for Jeff to get done with his meeting before we drove home. We decided to let Brindy spend the night over at Wendi's house so I wouldn't have to worry about her the next day since we had to check out and store our bags until Jeff got done. It turned out that Brindy did terrible! She was so upset! Wendi couldn't get near her because she was so terrified. She was shaking and Wendi couldn't get near her. She would run away too fast. She got better when she spent the night but she cried all night long. Wendi said she tried to put her in her cage, then in her bed with her but Brindy wouldn't have any of it. All she wanted to do was go sit by the door we went out of and cry. Poor girl! We've never left her overnight before and it was a completely foreign place to her. She did follow Wendi's dog, Daisy, around some so she would go outside when Daisy went outside. I felt terrible for Wendi, but she was a very good sport about it. She's an animal lover so that helps! The last day we did more pool lounging and then went to Wendi's house to pick up the pooch before we drove home.

If you want to see more pictures of the hotel and stuff from this trip, click on the link for The Ritz Family Photo Album. I'll be adding them to the Summer 2005 Album.