Time Away

We have returned home from our trip to Dallas. This was Naomi's first road trip and while she wasn't a terrible traveler, she isn't up to Lili's travel standards quite yet. We'll keep working on it though :-)

Our trip to Dallas was via Memphis where we stopped for the night. In the past, we've driven straight through. It's only about a 13-14 hour trip, but we weren't sure how well Naomi would handle the travel. Let's just say that stopping was a good idea.

We had Gus's Fried Chicken for dinner (yummy) and Naomi was quite the hit there. We decided to get our dinner to go and parked ourselves outside for the wait while Dave stayed inside waiting on our chicken. A woman and her mom came out of the restaurant and said hi to Naomi. She flashed her world winning smile at them and they went crazy. Lili, introduced them to Naomi (which she typically does) so they now knew her name and every time the woman would say, "Hi Naomi" she would flash that smile again sending them over the edge with admiration. After a few minutes they went back into the restaurant and the woman approached Dave telling him how beautiful his girls were. He was caught totally off guard and having absolutely no idea what had happened outside. Several minutes later the woman and her entire family left the restaurant and she had each of them stop to say, "Hi Naomi" so they could see her smile. She was the Belle of the Ball.

After some chicken, we took the girls to the pool for a short swim before Dave headed to Corkey's to pick up ribs for a 4th of July cookout.

While in Dallas we visited the aquarium. I would suggest that you not visit the aquarium on a holiday. It was very difficult maneuvering through all the people, especially with a double stroller. Even though it was extremely crowded, it is a nice aquarium. We also did some swimming, shopping, and tried some new restaurants. One of the restaurants we tried was Addis Abeba. In case you can't tell by the name, it is an Ethiopian restaurant and was very good. After we finished dinner, two of the employees came over to our table and were informed that Naomi and Tsegaw are from Ethiopia. They took turns holding the babies and asked where they were from. They were so gracious and interested in our babies.

My water princess.
Naomi relaxing in the pool.
She was very relaxed.

Of course the highlight of our trip was meeting Tsegaw. He is a cutie patootie!! I did my best to get pictures of the kids, but had some trouble getting all of them in one shot looking at the camera. I have great respect for photographers.

The cousins first play date.

We tried to get pictures of the kids at various times throughout the visit and I managed to get them all turned toward the camera, but that was all I got.
This one was cute.
Somehow I got the two little ones to give me a cute photo moment.

On the way home from Dallas we stopped in Springfield, MO and had dinner with my high school BFF. We reconnected back in November after being apart for 30 years and it was wonderful to meet her hubby and to do a little more catching up.

Now we're home and back to reality for a little while before heading out to Portland for the Toukoul Adoptive Families Reunion in August.