Look Who We Met At Grand Prix Of Tampa!

I was cleaning out my wallet while I was in Sioux Falls and I realized that I had a receipt from the Grand Prix of Tampa from Jaime's birthday and it said I had 5 free all-day passes to play Goofy-Golf and drive Go-Carts. Since the coupon expires tomorrow (01-13-08), we had to use them up today. I even told Katrina to invite her friend Melissa and family to come along. We actually had 3 spare tickets because Luann had a hair-styling appointment and wouldn't be able to make it until later, so she said that we could use her coupon. This means that Katrina and I were joined by Melissa, her mother Tammy and her younger brother Philip. We also had a big surprise while we were there!

It turns out that my cousins, Karen & Sharon were there for one of the kid's birthday. Talk about serendipity, they had played a round of golf and we were following them. I was able to snap a couple of pictures of the troupe in the game room.

They seemed to be real intent on beating this 'Deal, Or No Deal' game.

Time to sort out who will be playing next...

While the kids continued to assault the video games, Luann, Sharon and Karen chatted for a bit, catching up on old news.

And there is Karen, hiding over Luann's shoulder.

After the birthday troupe left, we focused on the go-cart track, trying win the "Best Driver" accolades amongst ourselves.

It looks like Melissa is getting some on-track advice from her mother, Tammy.

See that smirk? She knows she's good...

Here is Melissa, kind of stuck in a log-jam of poor drivers. You can see how she is reacting to a 'thump' on her right-rear corner.

In this picture, she is checking to see if the kid to her right is blind, or is he just driving with his eyes closed? As you can see from this shot (take another look at the previous picture) he definitely is driving with his eyes closed... You can click on any of these pictures to see a larger version of them.

We kept wondering why little Philip just couldn't seem to keep up the pace. Ah-hah, I see the problem! You need to focus on driving, not your nails little guy!

Ho-Hum... Just another day on the track...

Well, it looks like Philip finally finished trimming his nails because he has both hands on the steering wheel now. Too bad it's time to bring the go-carts back into the 'barn' though.

It was a fun and surprise-filled day. Looks like it's time to say, "Bye-Bye!"

P.S. - we had to leave early because I was coughing & hacking so much, I had to go to the walk-in doctor's clinic to see what was wrong. Turns out I have acute bronchitis and am on steroids, amoxicillin and a strong, narcotic cough suppressant. The doc said I was on the way to a case of pneumonia if I waited just a couple more days... And all I wanted to do was stop the troublesome coughing.