Homeschool – Shot out of a cannon…

Dear Mrs. Fortner’s class:

We had quite a day with Flat Stanley! First, we cut Stanley out and picked his colors carefully. We colored him and got him ready for his day. We got into the car and headed out. We started our errands at Walgreens, but next door was the Whataburger, which is the best place to eat hamburgers in Texas, bar none! But it was too early and I told Mason and Stanley “NO!” and they got in the car and we continued.

We headed to get gas at Kroger’s and went to the Texas A&M University Memorial Student Center so that we could get a photo with the big Aggie ring. It’s a tradition for students who are graduating and get their Senior Ring to take their picture with their family under it. So Flat Stanley and Mason walked around with me to the back of the Student Center and took a picture under it, and at the same time we got some shots of the newly renovated Kyle Field, home of the Fighting Texas Aggies! We’re very proud of our stadium—did you know that it can hold 80,000 people?! That is more people than live in our whole town! And we can see and hear it from our backyard.

Mason’s daddy works on campus not too far from the George H. W. Bush ’41 Library, which is where we made our next stop. There is a really neat statue outside of the Library of wild horses leaping over the pieces of the Berlin Wall that President Bush received from the German government. Mason thought Stanley was going to jump out of his hand onto one of the horses he was so excited! There is also a piece of steel bar from one of the World Trade towers from Ground Zero from September 11^th.

Next we went to one of our favorite places to eat called Blue Baker. It’s a local restaurant, and if you dress all in cobalt blue, they will give you a free cookie! And sometimes they have really wacky contests. We love it and Stanley reeeeaaaallllllyyyyy wanted a cupcake! There were so many to choose from, but Mason and I both decided on brownies so he decided he would have a taste from both of ours. I got the peanut butter brownie and Mason got the fudge brownie with nuts. Stanley loved both!

As we were leaving Blue Baker, Stanley was checking out all the different apps and job listings posted on the door. He told us he might be moving here! Mason and I think he might really be in love with the pizza and the cupcakes and the brownies. Plus, we kept finding him hiding in the bread displays. I’m not sure he really needs chocolate cappuccino bread, are you? Yikes! He’s already busy enough.

And he really seemed to be getting into the Christmas season decorations that they had set up! He kept hugging this Aggie Santa painted squash! We also happened to see one of our friends Brian “Smitty” Smith and his wife Aimee while we were there. Brian is a member of Texas Task Force 1. You will learn more about them in the next part of our story. (Mason looks grumpy—I think he and Stanley were thinking about the pizza we were waiting on, don’t you?)

Texas A&M University has several agencies under its umbrella, and one of those is Texas A&M Engineering Extension Service, and they train firefighters, police officers, and rescue workers and sponsor Texas Task Force 1, one of the 28 FEMA-approved Search and Rescue teams deployed on 9/11. TX-TF1’s canine Bretagne was recently nominated for Hero Dog of the Year for her services as a therapy dog by the American Humane Society. They train out at Disaster City—and that’s where we took Stanley next.