Taylor's 4th Birthday

This weekend, Carson and I took off with Mimi, Pop's and BJ to Dallas, TX for Taylor's 4th birthday party. Blake stayed home for work and had to celebrate his birthday on Sunday all by himself. :(.

We left early on Friday morning to get there for lunch time....Pop's had other plans for us though....right Pop's!!! Let me do a little explaining for Pop's, we were pulling a cargo trailer full of stuff to bring over to Julie's house (Carson's outgrown clothes for Will, Carson's glider rocker for Will since theirs broke, a few riding toys that Carson has outgrown and didn't sale at the garage sale, etc.), so needless to say, we were not getting good gas mileage; but we didn't know it was that bad. So Pop's thought we should get more than what the gas gauge was showing and the exit that we were going to get off at, that gas station had shut down, so we had to keep going...that is until the van started "putting" down the interstate. Pop's kept swerving, trying to get all the gas that we could, just to try and get to an exit. Well, we made it to the exit, but still on the interstate. Just our luck, this exit had nothing...per our GPS, the next gas station was another 18 miles!!! Thank goodness we had road side assistance and called them and they said that it would be 30 min. or so before they could get someone out....great....send them on!

In the meantime, we called Steve (Julie's husband, for those of you who don't know who Steve is), he works for Car Financial and has dealers in the area. So he put his phone to work and called one of his dealers in Alexandria, LA and they came right out with 5 gallons of gas to put in the van. Thank goodness for nice people!!! This put us about an hour behind schedule.

So off we went to Julies...we got there around 4pm. After settling in, we headed to Garden Ridge, our favorite store that we HAVE to visit every time we go to Dallas. The kids had a ball looking at all the Halloween and Christmas decorations.

On Saturday, we had to get ready for the big #4 Birthday party. We had so much to do, while Julie and Mimi took Taylor to dance class, I had to get the birthday treat bags ready, cut out butterfly stickers, and start decorating...all while have Carson and Will running all around the house. Taylor was so excited, she kept saying it was her "Birthday Weekend"...and it was! Taylor's birthday party was a great success, she and all the kids had lots of fun.

On Sunday, we took the kids a Toys R Us store right around the corner, it was brand new and just opened it's doors a week ago, it was so nice and clean! It also had a Babies R Us that was attached, but all of our kiddos have pretty much out grown the Babies R Us side, so we didn't venture over there. I don't think the kids would have let us anyway, they were having way to much fun playing with all the toys! Once we got home and had lunch, we put the kids to nap and Julie and I headed off to the Outlet Mall. This Outlet Mall is so huge, it is about triple the size of the Gonzales Tanger Outlet Mall. Mom told us to take our time and not to hurry, so we took her up on her offer!

We headed back to Zachary on Monday morning...I think we brought more back that what we took over there! We brought back Steve's mini motorcycle, 3 singing Christmas trees, a travel swing and bouncer that were Carson's and Will has outgrown, etc. So on the way back, we found that if we "drafted" behind 18 wheeler trucks, we made a lot better gas mileage...and this time we didn't run out of gas!!

Carson was very happy to be back home with all his toys....but once we got settled, I found Carson sitting on the floor in the living room, with a strange look on his face. I asked him what was wrong and he said, "I sad". I asked him why he was sad and he said, "I miss Pop's"....awww