dallas

Birthday Trip to DFW

| patmcg

For Kit’s big 40th birthday, we took a weekend trip up to Dallas to see a Rangers baseball game and enjoy brunch at the Dallas Arboretum.  Kit took some ribbing from her fancy friends who thought this did not sound like fun at all.  They would rather go to their vacation houses in San Francisco or Italy than plain old Dallas.  But Kit had a good time, and the kids had a ball.  We were wiped out and still recovering days later from the 36-hour trip (which is the longest we could get out of town).  A few highlights…

  • Much to Claire’s chagrin, The Rangers game went into extra innings.  By the 10th inning, though, Claire had come to accept that the game was going to take a long time, and she started to get very good at cheering when it seemed like people were excited about something. The Rangers lost to the Royals 4-1.
  • Throughout the weekend, Claire was a character named Scrumford the dog.  Scrumford is a sweet, shaggy dog who gets in trouble despite his best intentions.  He loves milkbones dipped in peanut butter and belly rubs from his cousin Susie.  Molly took on the alternating characters of Susie, Cuppy (Scrumford’s dog friend), and Old Whiskers (yes, a cat).
  • Molly missed her nap both Saturday and Sunday.  She was extra crazy at bedtime but otherwise handled it well.
  • We got to bed late on Saturday night (thanks largely to Dallas traffic) and all slept in until 8:30 am on Sunday, shattering our previous record by an hour and also pushing the rest of the day about two hours late past the expected 6:30 wake up time (who needs an alarm?).
  • The girls absolutely adored the Dallas Arboretum.  Claire said it was “literally” what heaven must be like.  We could have spent all day there but had to get home.  To top it off, Claire got some shark’s teeth and a butterfly necklace at the gift shop with her allowance ($8).  Molly got a couple of sheets of stickers which she promptly stuck to each other in one big clump.
  • The girls traveled well besides getting a little crazy at times from over-excitement in the hotel room.
  • The girls each gave Kit a ceramic creation they hand-painted at Ceramics Bayou.

And the rest I will leave to the pictures…

2008 in Review

| patmcg

Here is this year’s Christmas mass mailing.


2008 was an eventful year for us. We started the year in a house in Atlanta with a two year old, and ended the year in a townhouse in Dallas with a three year old. That may not be the most radical transformation imaginable, but it seemed pretty big to us. Fortunately, the two year old turned out to be the same kid as the three year old, just slightly aged.

Kit spent the first half of the year finishing up her pathology residency at Emory University and preparing for her fellowship at UT Southwestern in Dallas. She completed the dreaded medical boards and endless other exams, licensures, and registrations to practice medicine in Texas. On the other hand, I transferred my current software position to the Dallas office by simply filling out a change-of-address form.

Meanwhile, we prepared to sell our house in Atlanta. Although the market was tough, we did turn down a generous cash offer from an “English woman” whose email happened to originate from a Nigerian cyber-cafe. In the end, we managed to sell the house to a local person who was legitimate but substantially less generous. Moving was not easy, but with some creative scheduling and plenty of help from our parents, we eventually got everyone and everything to Texas in good shape.

We left behind great friends and memories in Atlanta. We have also enjoyed our time so far in Dallas. Claire declared upon seeing her new house, “I love it! It’s my Christmas day!” She is a huge fan of the Texas Rangers baseball team, a connoisseur of the local parks, and even a local architecture enthusiast, especially the Bank of America Tower, which is trimmed with bright green lights from top to bottom like a 921-foot tall Christmas tree. Claire insists that a prince lives in the tower, but I am pretty sure it is zoned for office space. Claire left her beloved nanny back in Atlanta but has transitioned admirably to daycare, where she has met many fun friends, learned about art and music, and developed a taste for
chicken fingers.

We are now trying to figure out what to do when Kit’s fellowship ends next summer. It is shaping up to be another eventful year.

Merry Christmas and everything else from Kit, Pat, and Claire.

The Glowing Towers of Dallas

| patmcg

Ever since it has started to get dark earlier, Claire has developed an intense interest in the glowing towers of Dallas. The first one that got her attention, and still her favorite, is the 921-foot tall Bank of America Tower downtown. Not only is it extremely tall, but is it also decorated with neon green lights from top to bottom, like a gigantic Christmas tree. Driving around Dallas, to and from school, shopping, or whatever, we sometimes catch fleeting glimpses of this tower, and Claire yells, “There’s the green tower!” Claire’s theory is that a prince lives in the top of the tower, and kids live on the other floors. At one point, Claire became so obsessive about this tower that she cried and yelled when she could not see it any more, and the disappointment ruined her mood for the whole night until we put her to bed. I think that episode was more about being tired or otherwise messed up than the tower itself. We talked about it the next day, and she sort of apologized for acting so mad about it and said she just wanted to see the tower again sometime.

Her fondness extends to other towers as well. She enjoys the Cityplace Tower, which is closer to our house, so we get better views of it. She calls this “the tower that matches my hair”, although she also knows it and the Bank of America Tower by their official names. (I personally like to call it Nakatomi Plaza since it reminds me of the movie Die Hard). From school she can see a clock tower and an office building with blue neon lights around the top. She says a prince also lives in the blue tower, but probably no kids live in the clock tower. You can tell she thinks these things through.