i'm back and in a much better mood!

well, i'm back from a wonderful weekend in the promised land!  two weekends in a row in TEXAS!!!  what am i going to do next weekend?

we decided to leave friday right after school so we could get  ahead of the snow storm. apparently, that was a good decision!  i hear that there was lots of snow everywhere, but it's amazing how quickly it melted! anyway.....

we took rocky-dog with us to texas because daryl thought he would freeze in the snow.  he's travelled with us many times before so it was no big deal.  it was funny, though.  this was the first time he actually explored the car.  he even discovered that he liked to ride on the dashboard.  he's certainly small enough to fit up there!  

we were just crossing lake eufala when the UNBELIEVABLE happened.  rocky was all perched on the dashboard looking cute, and then there was this horrible splat sound, like you hear in cartoons.  i looked up and rocky had POOPED on the dashboard!!!! in my car!!!!!!!  not only was he on the dashboard, he was right over the defrost vent!!!  AND this was not a solid poo, it was squishy and liquidy at the same time!!!  

photo of the day #86

oh no he didn't!

and if that wasn't bad enough, apparently colby is super-sensitive to the smell of doggie doo, and he puked everywhere!!!  i know, this all sounds too disgusting to be true, but i promise you i didn't make this up!  this is really my world! 

of course we didn't have any kind of wipes in the car, so daryl was cleaning up rocky's mess with used tissues and a few napkins i happened to have in the glove compartment.  thankfully colby just managed to get the puke all over his blanket and hands.  so i just used the dry parts to wipe him off.  i found a wal-mart sack and put his nasty blanket in that.  colby was crying because he had just puked and because he couldn't stand the smell.  then he pointed to the seat where

 there was a 'chunk' i missed in cleaning up.  i grabbed the first thing i saw on the floorboard to wipe up the chunk, and it just happened to be spencer's sock!  i didn't tell him until later though.  thank goodness i remembered to tell him before he put it back on!

poor, colby....

daryl wasn't able to get all of the poop out of the vent, and unfortunately we had to use the defrost.  so i kept spraying my coconut lime body spray in the car.  at first daryl griped, but it wasn't long until he grabbed the bottle and was spraying it in the vent!

we finally got to terrell, texas about 10:30 that night.  that was an exhausting trip down there!

saturday morning i got to go treasure hunting with my boys, daryl, matt and his girls.  judy was at the ladies' retreat, so she didn't get to go with us.  i was really surprised that matt and daryl wanted to go, but they were really nice about it.  the first store we went to was WEIRD.  they had all kids of big things and lots of reproductions of antiques.  they also had lots of mannequins and animals....like i said, WEIRD.

but i did find this cute little elephant!  he was even nice enough to let me try his glasses on!

after that we ate lunch at this yummy chinese place and then i got to go to another antique mall!  it was huge, and they had lots of cool stuff.  

i knew the rest of the crew was tired of treasure-hunting, so i didn't spend as much time in there as i could have.  i only bought one thing, and that was a set of colored pencils like i used to have when i was a kid.  i found this picture that we used to have in our house growing up.  i wonder what happened to it....

when we got back to matt and judy's house, i dropped the rest of the gang off and went to wal-mart.  my "instructions" were to just go to wal-mart and come back because judy was going to be home soon and i hadn't seen her yet.  daryl thought i would go find some more antique stores and be gone too long!  can you believe that????  i told him i also needed to go find some bluebonnets because i wanted some pictures of them.  he said that was ok, but not to take too long. ok, whatever!

photo of the day #87

texas bluebonnet

i found my bluebonnets, got what i needed at wal-mart, and then i headed straight back to matt and judy's..........not really.  i wanted that to be true, but i couldn't help myself.  i KNEW there were a couple of antique stores in terrell because i googled them before we left!  they were calling me, and i didn't spend that much time in the first one!!!  but the second one...was so COOL! there was not a lot of stuff, but what was there was right up my alley!  i took way too long in there!  sorry, judy!

for dinner we all went to one our favorite local restaurants, los hermanos! 
it was just like old times.  the harrells and the hayes having dinner at los.

juevos con papas, baby!!! yummers!

today was homecoming at rockwall and brin church of christ where daryl served as youth minister for 5 years.  they invited him back to speak during bible class.  it was nice to be back.  it felt normal to be sitting in that auditorium worshipping with all of our friends.

i have to be honest.  i wasn't really looking forward to going back to terrell.  i kept telling myself it was because it would take my whole weekend and because i've gained so much weight since we lived there.  but as i was driving around terrell by myself yesterday, i realized the REAL reason i didn't want to go back...it made me sad.  leaving terrell to move to arkansas was the hardest move i've ever made in my life, and i've made several.  my heart hurt when we left there to move to arkansas.  i think i cried most of the way to newport the day we left.  the people in terrell, particularly matt, judy and charis, were the closest friends i'd had in my adult life.  judy and charis are like sisters to me.  

photo of the day #88

judy, amy, charis

so going back to terrell just reminded me of all we left behind.  i didn't want to hurt again.  but you know what?  i'm not as sad as i thought i'd be.  god puts us just where he needs us, and i know there is a reason why we're here in oklahoma and not in terrell.  like the michael w. smith song says, "friends are friends forever if the lord is the lord of them."  i believe that with all my heart.  today was about homecoming, and this world isn't my home.  heaven is my home, and i will see my friends again in this life from time to time, but someday....i'll spend forever with ALL my brothers and sisters in christ when we all go home to be with our father.

quote of the day:  "There's no place like home." ~Dorothy, from the Wizard of Oz