2 of the San Antonio Missions

Well now that the weather is cooling off it is time for the Ramos' to adventure out of the Air Conditioned house and out of hibernation and go on our family adventures. We decided to tour the old missions that was established back in the 1700's by the conquering Spainards. There are a total of 5 missions and we visited two of them. We started with Mission Espada, here are some tourist photo opts!

This is a church that was astablished in 1690 by the Archdiacies and is still in use today!

Anyways we had a great time getting out and enjoying being outside. Not a whole lot is going on around here. Annabella is doing better at school now that Emily drives her to school. Marcus is Marcus and he is a boy. Gotta love it. He finally decided on a Halloween costume and now he wants to wear it all the time, or at least asking if it is Halloween yet. Emily is doing better from the recovery of having her tonsils taken out. She has issues of food getting caught in the holes that were left behind but she deals with it. I finished another class and started another and start another in November. I will be so happy once school is done, tired so tired.

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Phil and Vicki (Derek's parents) came to visit over the extended weekend and we had a good time. We drove up to Ft. Hood in the Suburban to visit old stomping grounds for my parents. We saw the first house that my parents bought, the same house that I came home to from the hospital. Kinda of cool, though I don't remember any of it. The town of Kileen, don't get me started, I felt pretty safe there, ok from in side the car with the windows up and the doors locked. Scary place. Not a place that I will aspire to visit again. When I was a kid I always said I would go back and see Texas the birthplace of me. I have been here, I have seen what I have seen and now I am ready to go.

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While my dad was we attempted to replace the rotors on our Nissan Xterra. I was really excited to work on the car and replace the rotors myself. First time for me to replace the rotors, not only that the Nissan dealership wanted to charge me $700.00 to do it. I thought to my self I can do it for pennies on the dollar, so I did my homework and yep sure enough I felt that I had enough mechanic experiance to do the job. Two rotors = $50.00, brakes = $25.00 vs. $700.00. So my dad and I went to the shop on base where they have car lifts to use and we lifted the car and pulled off the wheels and calipers only to find out that you have to have a special tool to take of the the hub that keeps the rotors in place. AAAAAGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!! My buddy Dave talked about sticking it to the man, well the man stuck it to me. I went to a few other cars in the shop to check out how most Rotors come off and man that tweeked me even more; however, I guess that is how they, the man, make money. From that point on I made a personal vow to do my best to not buy new vehicles that if I cant work on my self, or at least simple tasks such as changing a rotor, then I don't want it. To me no fancy car is worth having if I can't work on it myself. I miss the VW Bus that Emily had and that is what I am going to shoot for. I Want a Bus again. I know I can work on that myself, thanks to the teachings of Mike (Emily's Dad). Anyways there you go.

Take care all.