Our trip to Silsbee - End of week 22

Well it was quite a weekend. This past weekend Tina, Ayden and I took a trip down to Silsbee, TX. Where you say? That’s right Silsbee, TX. That is where some of Tina’s family lives. We went down there for a surprise 80th birthday party for her grandmother. It was about a 5 hour drive down there. It is pretty much right on the edge of Texas and Louisiana. The drive down there was actually kind of pretty. There are many tall trees, much taller then we get in our neck of the woods it seems. Perhaps that is because it is much older and the trees have had years to grow. Ayden got to see a lot of her family she had never met before. The first night we stayed in a hotel called the Pinewood Inn. The pictures on the website brought to vision sandy beaches and palm trees. I thought, sweet, we are staying in a nice place. …..hold that thought. So Tina and I pulled into the parking lot and I asked worriedly “is this it”? It was it. To set the scene, it looked like a two story prison without the barbwire fence. But wait, the outside seemed like the Ritz Carleton compared to what terror lurked inside. “Be right back”, I said to Tina and Ayden as I closed the door to get our room. I was greeted as I entered the bathroom size guest check in area by a woman I could only describe as the long lost grandmother of Methuselah. She proved to not only be extremely old but also completely incapable of following any train of thought. After about 15 minutes in her presence I was ready to sleep in a cardboard box on the side of the road instead of deal with her. As it turned out we got our room, for $18 more than we were quoted. I didn’t mention that they lost our reservation we made a week prior to arriving there. Or more specifically the old woman didn’t know where to find our reservation. Once we got to our “suite” we noticed the state of our room. To set the scene, we had two holes in the wall by the bathroom sink where electrical plugs should have been. Instead there were simply rectangular holes in the walls with electrical wires showing. Looking up in the bathroom afforded you the view of a large square hole in the top where a bathroom fan should have been. The paint in the bathroom wasn’t finished. A little later in the evening after one of us went to the bathroom we heard the sound of running water from the toilet. We waited…waited…waited. The sound didn’t stop, so we ended up having to lift the toilet cover and adjust the big black ball looking thing so the water would stop incessantly filling up in the toilet. The next morning as Gabi was attempting to cook her oatmeal in the microwave a fuse was blown, causing the power to go out. It was not the greatest hotel stay in my life. Other than that we had a fun time. Tina’s grandmother was surprised and I think having everyone there made it a special time for her. My health and eating continue and are going well. I will update with pictures and stuff when I have made some more progress.