Ingram the Conqueror: Tuesday March 12th, Visiting G-Daddy's Office!

We all slept in late after being at the Rodeo until late last night and didn't make any plans for the morning. G-Mommy made pancakes for breakfast that were yummy and then I headed to the shower in case we went anywhere. The kids asked G-Mommy if they could make an obstacle course and she said that was a great idea but that it had to be safe. While G-Mommy was in the kitchen cleaning up and then in the den with Madison, Lindsey and Ingram were busy using the roll of "It's a Boy!" ribbon and made a really great obstacle course ON THE STAIRS!!! When I came out of my room after getting dressed to talk about our day, I couldn't believe what these two had done. I was very impressed with their creation and really had a hard time stepping in and out of all the strings to get downstairs; I'm pretty sure it was even more amusing watching me go back up too! The second time I had to go downstairs, I jumped down from the bannister instead of trying to weave through the lines since they had doubled since my first trip. Lindsey and Ingram did a great job but I'm not sure they heard the last part of G-Mommy's statement that said it couldn't be dangerous!

This summer when the girls were on their fundraising tour for St. Jude, the management team at Flotek (which is G-Daddy's company) sat down and listened to the girls during one of their presentations. After their meeting, Flotek Industries decided that they would match the girls donations up to $20,000 and we were so excited and grateful about their generosity. Once we knew that we were going to Texas, we definitely wanted to make a trip to G-Daddy's office to meet some of the crew. And today was the day...we left G-Mommy and G-Daddy's house and headed towards G-Daddy's office around lunch time. The only bad thing about this was that we were already hungry and his office was about an hour away! I knew the kids couldn't hold out that long so we decided to eat on the way so that the kids would not be going into meltdown mode while we were there. As parents, we always talk to our kids about their behavior and remind them to be on their best behavior. But then again, we realize they're 10, 9, and 4 and they're going to act like goofballs some too. Luckily, today was one of the days they were on their best behavior and they even shook hands with everyone they met as they introduced themselves.

To us, G-Daddy is a very proud Grandfather and loves to play baseball and "golfball" with the kids in the yard, but at work, he is the VP of Chemical Technology for Flotek Industries. His office is at the Flotek Lab and with that are all sorts of chemicals and samples that are being examined; everything is scientific and safety is of utmost important...even more reason I hoped that the kids would be on their best behavior!! When we got there, he was outside waiting for us and was grinning from ear to ear as the kids took off running from the parking lot to his door. Once G-Mommy and I got inside, we quickly went into G-Daddy's office to try and keep the noise level to a minimum but it didn't work!

The kids started drawing on G-Daddy's huge dry erase board with his permission of course and they're giggling at all their pictures and at Ingram standing in the chair to reach the board. One by one, some of the Flotek folks started coming in to meet the kids and see them in person; after all, he's been talking about them forever and now we were there in person. We loved getting to meet everyone at the office and the kids especially enjoyed meeting and playing with Lakia and getting invited by Angus to his birthday party later in the afternoon. Ingram was very determined to show Lakia how high he could jump and even tried to show her how fast she was, but thankfully G-Daddy quickly stopped him from running the office. Lakia tried very hard to jump several times just as Ingram showed her, but each time he told her she didn't do it right and would show her again.

The kids wanted to get a tour of the lab but we had one minor problem...we were all in flip flops except for G-Mommy and Ingram. There are two rules of visiting the lab that everyone has to follow: safety glasses and close toed shoes. Lucky for us, G-Mommy was in tennis shoes (granted they were a size 9AAA) and was willing to take them off and let us take a turn in them. Madison was up first and she loved it and asked questions along the way. She was the first one to look super cute in her safety goggles and G-Mommy's shoes. Next up Lindsey traded out her flops for G-Mommy's shoes and safety goggles; she might have been the funniest one since she was the smallest! Ingram had his boots on and lucky for me, G-Daddy had a spare pair of loafers under his desk that I got to wear along with my nifty safety goggles. Since I had G-Daddy's shoes, G-Mommy got her shoes back and came along with us on our tour which meant we left Madison AND Lindsey in G-Daddy's office by themselves...scary thought! All three of us told the girls not to leave G-Daddy's office for any reason and I went even further and told them not to leave the dry erase board; when we came back from our 10-minute tour, they were both pretending to be asleep in the chairs right where we left them.

By then, it was almost 3pm and time for Angus' birthday party and the kids were super excited! I mean, who gets invited to a party the first time you meet someone?? We loved it and the kids got to meet the rest of the folks in the office and were able to act silly since it was a birthday party. So many of the people at the office had donated to St. Jude and had been keeping up with us and it was so fun to get to meet a portion of the company that had made such a generous donation to St. Jude on our behalf! They kids got a little excited from the party and the cake, and we quickly made our departure to the outdoors. There was a beautiful lake and bridge and we ran across it and played around before we had to get back in the car for our hour plus drive home since it was almost rush hour.

By the craziness doesn't stop there, the kids and I took Honey for a walk around the neighborhood when we got home and ended up running in circles over and over again to get energy out. Ingram especially seemed to be in Energizer Bunny mode and ran about 10 laps around this little section in their neighborhood. After all that, we headed to dinner at Hasta La Pasta with G-Mommy! They were great and the girls have a new thing they do to keep themselves from being bored; it's a hand game and they did it over and over and over again. It's great and it passes the time and makes everyone around laugh too.