Graduation Day

We drove to Austin this past weekend to attend a family member's High School Graduation ceremony.  We left Friday evening around 4:00 PM and ended up running into a bunch of traffic going through downtown Dallas.  It was stop and go for about 1-1/2 hours and we ended up getting to Round Rock around 8:00 PM.  We stayed at the Hilton Garden Inn there.  There is a Saltgrass Restaurant right in front of the hotel, so we ate Dinner there.  The food was marginal at best.  I had the tenderloin K-Bob which in better days used to be all tenderloin, but now they are mixing chicken into it so that they can charge more money and give the customer less.  Having chicken in it was probably for the best as the tenderloin was tough and didn't taste very good.  Adeline was fascinated with the longhorn, deer and bison heads that are hanging all over the restaurant.  Here is a picture of Adeline and I at the table:

Adeline and Mae at the Saltgrass Restaurant in Round Rock, TX

The graduation ceremony was at 9:00 in the morning on Saturday, so we got up, ate some breakfast and then headed there. Here is a picture of Adeline making a goofy face at breakfast while eating her yogurt. The ceremony was very nice and I was quite surprised that both the Salutatorian and Valedictorian talked about their relationship with Jesus Christ during their speeches, especially since they were graduating from a public school!  My bet is that this doesn't happen in public schools in states other than Texas.  It was nice to see that such young people were unafraid to talk about their faith when most kids their age are more concerned about maintaining a cool image.

 

Adeline Making Goofy Faces Over Breakfast

After the ceremony we went back to the hotel and took a long nap and then Adeline's maternal grandmother picked her up and took her to spend the night at her house in Georgetown.


After Adeline left, we went over to a party at Hernan's brother Luis' house.  Luis' daughter Christina was the one who graduated from High School.  They had a delicious spread of food there and plenty of beer!  We had a very nice visit with Hernan's brothers.  Here is a picture of Christina and me at the party:

Christina and Mae at the Graduation Party

We left the party around 10:00 PM and went back to the hotel to sleep.  We got up the next day and I jumped into the shower and soaped myself up, only to have the hotel fire alarm go off!  We thought that maybe the steam from the shower might have set off the alarm in our room, so I got out of the shower dripping soap and water and called the Front Desk.  The woman told me that they were testing the alarm and not to worry about it.  Testing the fire alarm at 9:00 AM on a Sunday morning!  And to makes things worse, they didn't even tell anybody that they were doing the testing!  I'm sure there were a lot of people who were running around naked there on Sunday!  Fortunately, I stayed in our room!  I'm going to write them up for it on the survey of our stay there.  I do have to say that other than the alarm incident, everybody there treated us very nicely as always.

After we ate breakfast we picked up Adeline in Georgetown and then headed back to Dallas.  We made a pit stop in Italy, Texas and look at what we saw on the side of I-35 there:

The Starship Pegasus Along I-35 in Italy, TX

Apparently, the Starship Enterprise's sister ship landed on the side of I-35 in Italy.  She is named the Starship Pegasus.  I had to stop and get out and take a picture of her!

All in all, the weekend was very nice, but way too short!  It was very hard rolling out of bed this morning, but the day didn't go too badly and now Monday is over.