New day, new week

We went to Shreveport yesterday to meet some friends. It was fun! We were under cloudy skies until just before we crossed the border into Louisiana. Then the sun came out. We met our friends at what used to be the Isle of Capri but has since been changed to "Diamond Jacks". Interesting place. Very loud, very crowded, but fun. B and I played the one armed bandits (which, incidentally, still have one arm but are now computerized!) while our hubbies played table games upstairs. We looked for the penny slots. That was interesting, to say the least. I did fairly well...had an amount given to me by my hubby and I managed to double it. I wasn't complaining at all.
When we got tired of the games, we went to dinner, then found our way to another casino, the Horseshoe. Very ritzy, very big, also noisy. I think they all are! Anyway, when we walked in, we saw a BMW in the hotel lobby. They were having a drawing for it at 10:00, so we registered for it. Of course, you had to be present to win. We left early, so we knew we weren't going to win. LOL!!
That casino wasn't friendly to any of us--we lost money, so we left. On our way out, we talked about the fact that the casinos are all on boats. There's some weird law that Louisiana has that says their casinos have to be off land. Don't know why, but that's it. When we walked into Diamond Jacks, we walked up a ramp and then onto the boat itself. You could feel it move a little when we got in there. Of course, the boats are permanently docked and aren't anything more than for show. It's how they get around the 'can't be on on land' thing.

Coming home, we saw a lot of lightning in the sky to the southwest. We first thought it was just heat lightning, but it kept getting more and more pronounced. We didn't have any way to check radar, so we winged it and just watched the sky. At about Marshall, the skies simply opened up and a LOT of torrential rain poured out. There was a lot of hail and it was too hard to see for the combination of lightning, rain and hail. There wasn't a lot we could do--we went from driving 85 miles an hour down to 30. Anyone on the highway last night was taking cover under whatever overpasses they could find. We got off the road and found ourselves under a garage awning...sat there for about 30 minutes, just talking, until we thought we'd be able to make it out again. The rain was still pelting the cars, but it wasn't as bad as it had been. We didn't get up to 80 again until just before we got to Dallas.

When we got to our friends' house (their kids, who are teenagers, watched number one son. Number one daughter was at HER friend's house last night!), it was 11:00. Number one son was STILL awake although the assorted parents were exhausted! We packed him up (had to collect video games, memory card and book and clean up his mess--games and game systems all over the living room floor!) and came on home. Got in around midnight. The storm decided to follow us and found us around 1-2 am. Good thing we weren't driving!! I know I didn't like that at all! I'm glad I wasn't behind the wheel.

We're going to have to plan on going out there again sometime soon. I truly enjoyed myself.

Saturday catch up

Real quick "fly by" catch up.
Last night was the gup test at the dojang. It was a pretty good test. We've got two new Cho Dan Bo's and a couple of kids who are moving up in the ranks toward that goal.
My kids also tested last night. My son needs a lot of work on his forms--he had some issues with Pyung Ahn Oh Dan...I could see that and I wasn't on the board!!
He needs to learn the co-ordination between his hands and feet. I'll work with him on that. I think he'll be learning Pyung Ahn Sah Dan for his next form. I'll have to really work with him. If he won't work with me, he'll have to work with another one of the black belts because I want him to be as good as he can possibly be. He's trying out for the competition team next weekend (that was his idea, not mine!), so I have to help him get ready for that.
I didn't see Miss A's test as she was hidden in the crowd, but hubby says she did pretty well. I did see her do Pyung Ahn Cho Dan. Other than a habit of doing a backfist that is WAY higher than I think it should have been, it looked good.

I'm going to Shreveport today with my hubby. We're celebrating our anniversary a week late. Some friends of his from work invited him to go and asked if I'd go along, so we decided to make a day of it. The kids are going to friends' houses and we're gone. It'll be fun. It's just a day trip, so it'll be a quick out and back.