In July of 2006, we had a visit from Brandon's good friend Devin.  Devin is from Northern California and went to school with Brandon for several years.  He was here for only a week but has changed our lives forever.  We love you Devin as if you were our own, we're just glad we can send you home once in awhile. :-)  Devin is a good kid, likes computers and feels Microsoft is evil and only uses Linux OS on his computer.  I gave him one of my old computers and a copy of Linux that Marisa's brother gave me.  Devin spent hours installing, tweaking, fixing, typing, all in an effort to prove to me that I should be using Linux instead of Windows.  I told him my work depends on my "Windows" computer.  He tried...

During his visit, we went to Fort Worth to check out the Historic Stockyards.  Used as a place to deal in livestock back in the days of the cowboy, today they have a cattle drive twice a day, an historic train travels from Grapevine Texas to the Stockyards once a day, then goes on to the Trinity River, and back then returns to Grapevine, another historic town here in the DFW area.  It was very interesting if you like historic sites, they had so many shops, the only problem was each of the shops sold mainly the same items, some shops were unique however, and most of them had a few items unique to the shop which made it worth our time.  I liked the part where you could purchase a beer from an outside vendor and walk down the street drinking it.

mmmmmmmm - Beer

Most of the time this train is pulled by a vintage steam engine, but this day the steam engine was out of commission because of maintenance.  The train was being pulled by a vintage diesel engine, which smelled a little but was still nice.

The train went from the shopping area of the Stockyards past this point, then stopped all of a sudden.  While we waited, the engine went past us on a track next to us, then we started moving the other direction, back to the Stockyards.