Aloha!
The fun keeps
on coming! Those crazy boys wore me out
today so I need to get right to this or I will fall asleep on the
keyboard. If all of a sudden you see “hejrbnuicdilfndjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj”,
it means I probably did.
This morning we were on a mission. We moved the time of our arrival at the church
up ½ hour so we would hopefully have enough time to get Ben C. to the airport
so he could attend his brother’s graduation in Florida. The families of the Houston Boys Choir were
wonderful. They had a lot of great
things to say about the boys and it looked like many of our boys had made some
new friends. A lot of emails and
addresses were being traded. 24 of the
boys arrived and loaded the bus lightening fast. Four of them were on the pokey side of things
and put us behind by a good 15 minutes.
This put us in jeopardy of missing the flight on the other side of
town. Luckily, traffic was on our side
and we made it and sent Ben to meet-up with his family. Don’t worry though: we will see him again in two days.
We didn’t really have much of a rest period after lunch
since it was an “off” day. Instead, we
finished the movie and listened to some music, just sort of chillin’. By 3:15 or so, we were at our motel in
beautiful Corpus Christie. The oil refineries
are quite impressive as you make the drive into town. They are pretty much all around you down
here. I hope that translates into lower
fuel costs when we need to fill-up the bus tomorrow.
The motel is pretty average, but we don’t plan to spend a
ton of time here. We are not downtown
Corpus like we were a few years ago when we were here. Instead, we are inland a few miles. I can only imagine that helped the price
substantially. With our own bus, this is
no issue whatsoever. We gave the boys an
hour and a half to chill-out in the nice AC in their rooms. They have a lot of fun during these times,
just them, their friends, and their games.
While they were relaxing Aaron was lining-up dinner plans.
Once per tour we like to try and do something a little more
special for dinner. A few years ago when
we were in Corpus with the Nordic Choir, we brought the boys to “Joe’s Crab
Shack” located right on the water downtown.
To this day, that meal is still regarded as one of the best we’ve ever
had. (In my 24 tours, I would put it Top
3). The only drawback of having a meal
like that is the obvious cost, but the experience of eating this kind of great
food is too much to pass up. We do our
best to make it work financially so we can offer the boys these opportunities.
Aaron was able to get our seats “saved” while I got the boys
dressed in their collared play shirts and play shorts. We wanted them looking casually nice so I
made them wash their faces too. This isn’t
Whataburger for crying-out loud. We
boarded the bus and drove the 10 minutes downtown. We took the slightly scenic route so the boys
could get a good glimpse of the palm trees, waterfront, ships, and amazing
houses that line the shore. It was
pretty fun to watch them pressed-up along the windows looking at all the cool
and unfamiliar sights. We found parking
right along the beach and walked the 5 minutes out on the pier to “Joe’s”. They were all set-up for us so the boys made
their way right to their seats and began with their drink orders.
We prepped the wait staff with our intentions. We ordered pretty much 1-2 of everything on
the appetizer menu and asked to set it up on the staff table as sort of a buffet
to get them started. Then the boys order
pretty much anything they wanted to try from the menu, within reason of
course. We really talked about sharing
food with others to try since this was about the experience as much as it was
filling their bellies. Lots of sampling
took place over the course of the night.
Once the appetizers arrived, we had each boy go through the
line with a small plate and try little bites of anything they wanted. We had calamari, mussels, coconut shrimp, cocktail
shrimp, fish, crab cakes, crab legs, and several other items. I was very impressed with the boys and their openness
to trying new foods. As far as I could tell,
the only thing that didn’t go over well was the jumbo cocktail shrimp. They did look a little slimy, but that is
kind of what they are supposed to look like.
They are shrimp, after all.
I had a little too much fun “playing with my food”. The pincers on the crab legs were too fun not
to play with. I scared a couple of the
boys pretty good and got “Tex” (Dillon) with them as well. (Dillon is now Tex. Not sure why we started calling him this, but
when you look at him, it just fits.) Don't worry moms - this picture was 99% staged.
The boys demolished a lot of food tonight with virtually all
of them finishing some large plates of food.
The sharing helped finish a lot of it.
25 of the 27 boys ordered seafood entrees! Following dinner, we had one unfinished piece
of business to take care of. Our very
own Arteom has a birthday today and nothing would make us happier than to make
it as memorable as possible. With the
help of the “Joe’s” staff, we made sure Arteom got the proper birthday song he
deserved.
Apparently the thing to do at this establishment is to put
on a big cowboy hat and ride an inflatable horse around the dining room while
everyone sings to you. Arteom misunderstood
this and took this to an entirely new level by exiting the dining room and
riding around the entire restaurant! It
was hilarious and I can only imagine what the people in other rooms must have
thought as he went riding into the room wearing this ridiculous hat. He loved it though.
After corralling Arteom, we said our goodbyes and went for a
short walk along the water. It was
pretty windy, but the breeze coming off the water felt pretty great. We saw a replica (not sure how authentic it
was) of the “Nina” along the shore.
Rodney was pretty impressed with it so I took his picture in front of
it. We followed the shoreline back to
the pier, which led us back to the bus.
The short ride back to the motel was filled with lots of laughter and
happy times. This was a great day.
Everyone took a shower and had a little time to get their
thoughts down in their journals and perhaps write a letter home. Then it was lights-out. We plan to let them sleep-in a bit in the
morning, but I am sure they will be rearing to go by the time we get around to
waking them up. Another big day is
scheduled for tomorrow with a trip to the USS Lexington in the morning and a
trip to the beach in the afternoon.
Be sure to follow our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/lolcb for all the
updates throughout the day. We do try to
limit our updates some because there is a point of diminishing returns, but 1-2
posts a day shouldn’t put us over the limit.
Our social media footprint has been doing very well this past eight days
and we have made many new “likes”. It
would be pretty cool if we could hit 900 “likes” before we get home. The more you share, like and comment on
things, the more it goes out to your friends.
Thanks for all that you folks have already done to help spread the
accomplishments of these great boys!
Another great day waits!
-P.J.
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