It's been quite the day, lol. 

Drive up to Gurdon, offload, back home, get the kids out of daycare, back home again, get stuff, get in the car and leave.  

I-20 traffic was horrendous as usual, but even more-so today with holiday traffic.  We got here alright, even with idiots doing stupid things on the highway....

Got our room , got a free appetizer card for a steak house, went over there, which was all of maybe a 1,000 feet away and at steak dinner.  I thought it amazing they had a steak meal on the kids menu  I don't see that anywhere else we go and yes, I check. These kids love steak.  

I ordered medium rare for all of us, most of it was in the "raw" territory.  I can eat it like that and totally enjoy it, I wondered about the kids? Turns out, one of them had very rare steak and the other was cooked to near medium rare.  I cut and served the near-raw stuff to the 7 year old, he merrily downed it without a hitch.  I didn't say it was undercooked, I wanted to see if he would eat it like that.  

If you tell a 7 year old the meat is not cooked well enough, they will just reject it. If you tell them nothing and see what happens? Who knows.  

It turns out this hotel does have a swimming pool. And indoor swimming pool and yes, we went swimming.  These boys love pools and we are on vacation.

There was another young boy in there, they all hit it off.  However...

I got into a conversation with what turned out to be the stepfather.  Their house just burned down. Been there, done that, I could totally empathize with them in a way that they might not find with other people, my house burned down in 2004 and it's and experience I'll never forget.  I'm not going to go into all of that now, excepting to say it's a miracle my son wasn't killed in that experience.  Their story went further with the lady having just gotten done with chemotherapy.  Him quitting his job to take care of her.  

I could go on, you get the picture, they are in a living hell right now.  They are actually living here in this hotel.  It is a residence inn and they do have rooms with 2  separate bedrooms that have their own doors and bathrooms.  There is a kitchen with a full sized refrigerator, a stove top, microwave, Keurig,, dishwasher and all the tableware, cookware and plates/glasses you need. There is a kitchen table, a desk area and a living room.  This is one of those types of places corporates like to put up their people that are out on travel and have to stay somewhere for a while.  

The boy attached himself to me quickly, which I thought odd. His father is in prison, but his stepfather was sitting in a chair right there  The boys wanted me to get into the pool, I didn't feel like it but they pleaded lol.  Ok, Ok! We had fun, but after an hour and a half? I'm ready to go to the room, settle down and relax for the rest of the evening. The boys didn't disagree, so we dried off and left.  I felt sorry for that entire family situation, but, their needs are being met.  Just the emotional stuff got to me, brought back memories of that fateful Sunday 

__________

That was yesterday.  It's about time to check out of this hotel and head over to 6 flags.  Going to be hot today, not sure how that's going to work out lol.