Day trip

Lance spends half of his life on Craig's List.

Mostly window shopping and trying to convince me how good of a deal something is.

30% of the time I forget to listen
20% of the time I don't even know what it is that he's talking about.
and 50% of the time its an outrageous splurge that I will never agree to.

As soon as we bought the Tahoe, he went to Craig's List looking for a grill guard.
That I wasn't convinced we needed.

He found one...
For $200--
In Temple, Texas.
just north of Austin.

Once the guy agreed to $150, which is like $300 cheaper than any others he found, Lance proposed the trip.

At first we thought about staying over night and making a weekend of it--
or leaving the kids behind and having a day together--
but eventually we just decided to make it day trip,
kids in tow like we do everything else in our lives--
and they handled it well.
(even Beaky who's not feeling well.)

Maddox, Mario, B and Mickey loaded in the backseat....
and Lance and I in control of the front--
we headed south.

We anticipated heavy traffic but it wasn't bad, therefor we were an hour and a half early.

After getting the grill guard and strapping it to the luggage cart, we decided to look up some local food.

Backyard BBQ had amazing reviews on Yelp and it claimed to be only 5 miles away.

20 minutes later and passing it 4 times, we realized it was a true hole-in-the-wall and the name was chosen honestly.
It was behind a banquet hall, in about a 15X15' room-- and had you not been looking for the hand painted sign that read, "BBQ in back", you might have driven past it 4 times, said ugly words, and assumed it was closed down, as well.

I'm glad we found it though, because it was awesome!

On the way home, we made the obvious stop in West at the Czech Stop Bakery.

I'll be honest, after many trips over the years, I've never bought the hype.
I know I may be stoned for admitting that-- but I guess cream cheese kolaches just aren't my thing.

But after the explosion, and the stress that little town has been through-- this stop felt different.

That town has pride, camaraderie, and perseverance written all over it.

We drove over to the site of the explosion, and though they have cleaned up most of the mess-- there's still devastation everywhere.

It was emotional.

And it kind of made me proud too...
that people came from all over to help people that they have never met-- and wanted nothing in return.
That's big, right?

I was glad we stopped.

We hopped back on 35 and finished our journey north to Kyleigh's birthday party.

The home stretch.

Exhausted from dancing too many times to 'Blurred Lines' with my husband...
and singing loud to Mark David Manders--
and jumping and sliding and pizza and cake...

We finally made it home.

Lance and Buster installed the grill guard,
and I went to bed!

Who knew sitting in a car exerting no energy could be so exhausting?