Mother Knows Best

Yesterday Ross and I drove out to Houston for a visit with the parentals. It started with lunch with Grandma at Chili's. (She's doing very well, thank you for asking.)

Then on to Seabrook where Ross took a nap (as much as the puppies would allow him to anyways) and I headed over to Brenda's to drop off a small thank you gift for letting us crash their lake house. It was chocolate from the amazing chocolate place Val took me in Seattle. Here's to hoping they like it!

Then a relaxing evening at home with Mom, Dad, puppies, football and surf-n-turf. Usually we have this little predicament of Lexi jumping at TVs and Mom and Dad having a very nice not-mounted flat panel. There's some concern about Lexi tipping it over. We came prepared with the vicious squirt bottle this time and after a few threatening "Lexi! I'm gonna squirt you!" declarations, all was fine.

The boys went to bed kinda early but per the usual, Mom and I stayed up late into the night gabbing.

Lexi, wore out and sleeping on
floorboards on the drive home

Then a lazy morning, a puppy walk down to Pine Gully Park (which is right on the Gulf, it was so good to see salt water) and a little more college football. And the puppies, they just played, and played and played. They are almost exactly the same size and age and a very good match for each other. There was so much puppy play, Lexi was dead tired on the drive home.

Good weekend all around.

Sometime during all the gabbing, Mom told me about the new Southwest Airlines credit card they signed up for. It came with a 50,000 Southwest Rapid Rewards points, enough for two round trip tickets to just about anywhere! There was an annual fee of $100 but when you figure that the free flights would probably equal $300 each...that means they come out ahead by $500.

Mom is a smart lady and I listen to her. She got me thinkin' and tonight at home I applied for a Southwest credit card. The special that Mom and Dad got with the 50,000 points wasn't going on any more but they did offer 25,000 points, enough for one free ticket. I crunched some numbers and I think this works out well.

A ticket to Boston for Jane's wedding will be 21,000 points. And then a flight from San Diego to San Francisco (which I intend on needing in April) is 7,000 points. I'll get 25,000 points from the credit card and then I have 4,000 points just from my current Southwest account. So I think with the annual $70 credit card fee, $5 per flight security fee...I think I can spend $85 and end up with round trip tickets Austin-Boston and one-way San Diego-San Francisco. Add into that the fact that I far prefer to fly Southwest v. other airlines and it's virtually perfect.

Mother knows best and I think Southwest Airlines is about to prove her right again.