Phew!...

(please excuse another "re-post".  things just aren't posting like it should be.)

What a busy little weekend it was around here.  The girls and I were busy helping Julie out where ever we could to get her shop, Botanica, ready for her grand opening on Saturday.  It was a blast!  Em helped make May bouquets, which she absolutely loved.  We may have a florist on our hands in the future!  Saturday we headed down to help in any way we could.  It was a good turn out.  Julie's shop is really going to take off.  She just has a wonderful way with making flowers look awesome, but different than everyone else's way of doing things.  A breath of fresh air.  I couldn't help but buy a couple of topiaries for the mantle, some cards, and gerber daisies.  It's such a stinkin' cute shop!  You can't help but walk out of there with a few things to brighten your day with.

After all of that, Sunday was suppose to be a quiet day around here.  Right.  I did find some time to finish some last minute Mother's Day gifts that I had been trying to crank out to mail on time.  At least that got accomplished.  Still no progress made on the purple sweater.  As you can tell above there was some great hooky time going on along with the M&M's, the Ipod jamming and cotton yarn spread out every where.  Things were going well until after bath time for the littlest one.  There was a trip to urgent care because I could just tell she was getting the same crud as Em and we needed to get medicine to head off the worst of it all.  Thank goodness the medicine kicked in fast and a real drama was averted with Brenna.

There was a quick trip down to Julie's shop today for a few more of her wonderful flower cards she makes herself to send off for Mother's Day.  She wouldn't let me out of the shop without taking some roses with me.  She said they were past their prime.  Yeah, right.  I didn't see anything wrong with them.  I've never had this many roses all at the same time before.  Gorgeous!!!  I must admit there will be fresh flowers in the house more often now that Julie is down the hill.  We must help with the floral economy whenever possible.  Especially with Julie owning the shop!

Okay, now for some more tid bits of the trip.  

As told, we started out waaaaaay early the next morning so that we could get through Amarillo as early as possible.  We got out of Lamar, Co around 6ish and the sun was barely coming up.  We could see all these red flashing lights along the horizon south of town but couldn't figure out what in the world they were, until we got just a few miles from them.  It was a wind farm.  Apparently 108 wind turbines to be exact.  You should have heard some of the "suggestions" from my crew when they were trying to guess what the lights might be from.  Alien landing strip, cattle disco, etc.  You know not to ask.  That was about the only thing to look at while driving through this part of the state.

(not my pic)

Continuing south into Oklahoma, we came to Boise City, Ok.  What are the odds that we live near Boise, Id and we would be going through Boise City, Ok?  The girls got a kick out of that because when you come into to town all the highways feed into the center of town and you must circle around the county courthouse to get to the other end of road that you need to be on to continue your journey.  Just look at the green sign in front of the courthouse.  The girls asked Glenn to go around in circles a couple of times because they thought it would be fun.  Glenn didn't go for that.

(not my pic)

Finally we crossed over the state line into Texas and you automatically started to smell the cattle yards.  It's amazing how you cross state lines and the terrain changes with the signs.  Did the surveyors do this on purpose to make sure each state had it's own look about it?  I'm wondering.  We started noticing alot of smooshed jack rabbits along the side of the highway also, which did not sit well with Em.  Alot of moaning and groaning about that.  And once Brenna saw the Texas sign at the state line we started to hear "Are we at Oma's yet?".  Yeah, awesome!  11 hours of that.  She just didn't understand how freakin' long it takes to drive across Texas.  Poor thing.  It was torture.

The 3 hour trip to Amarillo wasn't bad being it was mostly done in the wee early morning hours.  We knew we were making progress we saw The Big Texan on the interstate and our turn off for the smaller highway was just a mile away.

(not my pic)

The Big Texan is huge and it has awesome food.  We had been there before when we were stationed in New Mexico and had to try it when out for one of our shopping trips to Amarillo.

They are famous for the 72oz. Big Texan Steak.  If you can eat at all during the allotted time (1hr), it's free.  Not for me.  All I can picture is John Candy in "the Great Outdoors" taking on the Old 96er.  Makes my stomach hurt just thinking about it.  That movie is a riot!  Just about peeing my pants just thinking about that movie!  Eating steak and wetting you pants.  Nothing better!

(not my pic)

Anyhoo...

It was just our freakin' luck that we hit Fort Worth about 3ish.  You know we've not been in the area for a loooooong time because we thought we would miss rush hour at this time.  Yeah, go ahead and laugh. It took us about an hour to get 10-15 miles, over some high rise ramps (yippeee) and another hour to get through the south of Fort Worth before we hit I-45.  I thought I was going to have to get Glenn to stop at the gas station to get a beer wrapped in a brown paper bag.  You Texans know what I'm talking about.  Everyday after work!  Once we got onto 45 there was much more to look at.  Lovely trees, wildflowers, old ranches, etc.  Very nice.  At least there were bluebonnets to look at all along the way to see after getting about an hour down the road.  

Dear ole' Sam Houston was a beautiful sight to see because we knew we were only 1/2 hour from our turn off to go east and 1 full hour before we hit Mom's house.  

More on dear Sam later.

But you know after seeing Sam things were not to be smooth sailing.  There was construction up the wazoo in Conroe with delayed us a wee bit more.  FAB!!!!  And it was getting dark.  It gets dark way sooner than it does here in Idaho.  And it made for a most wonderful trip through the big expanse of piney woods along the rest of our trip.  Pitch black I tell you.

We finally reached Mom's house (14 hour trip).  It was all I could do to give Mom huge hugs and kisses, help unload the truck, get the girls cleaned up, shower myself, take a few Tylenol and hit the sack.  Heaven!

Day three was awesome.  We went no where.  There was no getting into a car for me.  We just stayed around the house and waited for Kimmy, Abe and little Alex to come over and spend the day with us.  That girl got so many hugs and sugars from everyone.  She's just so stinkin' cute!!!  I'm not biased you know.   And of course see all of the wonderful neighbors that we haven't see for a long time, such as Mrs. Myers.  You could just squeeze her.

I'm tired just remembering all of that.  I need a break for the rest of the day just to get ready for day four! I just remembered that I forgot to tell everyone that I will be "receiving" a brand new nephew in August!  Mom couldn't wait and had to call us while we were in Cheyenne to share the news.  There was alot of WOHOOing going on in the truck then.  More on that later also.

Until next time!