Bruce Almighty: Uncle Joe's Retirement Party

On Saturday, April 14th, we took a trip to Fayetteville, Arkansas, for Uncle Joe's retirement party. I flew with the kids while Andy stayed behind to do some household chores. He oversaw the installment of new carpet while we were gone. We are going through our spring cleaning phase and the carpet upstairs was so dirty and cheap (I call it cheap apartment carpet). We had it steam cleaned last year but it still had spots and I can't tell you how many times Matthew peed on it when he was a baby because I couldn't change his diaper quick enough. We also had some tile work done in our master bath that took us several weeks to figure out what we wanted with multiple trips to the tile store but we are happy with the results.

Andy dropped us off at the airport Saturday morning and the kids did very well at the airport and on the airplane. The flight itself was short at 45 minutes and the planes have so many seats available that all my coworkers call it the "non-rev special". We met my best friend from childhood, Suzanne, at chic-fil-A and the kids enjoyed playing together. We went to Walmart to buy a couple of things (milk) and both kids did not have their shoes on. I put both of them in the shopping cart and I was laughing to myself because Matthew walks around the house without shoes all the time and Andy calls him "Arkansas boy". Here we were in Arkansas going to Walmart with no shoes on. I probably should have taken a picture.

We surprised my uncle and cousins by showing up at the retirement party. Uncle Joe had a party at his club house with 2 other guys that were also retiring from AT&T. We went to the club house last year for Uncle Joe's wedding and Matthew had so much fun running around with the other kids. He remembered and he was excited to play with them again. We ate our favorite BBQ and enjoyed cake. We went back to hotel where the kids enjoyed running through the halls and jumping on the bed. We all slept well in a king bed.

In the morning, we met Uncle Joe and Aunt Janet for breakfast at IHOP. My rental car wouldn't start so Joe had to pick us up until he could jump start it later. We had to move car seats (which are such a pain) but we made it and he got our car working after breakfast. Apparently, I left some flood lights on over night. Oh jeeze!

We swam in the hotel pool and then headed off to the airport around noon. The weather was rainy with some storms in Dallas so our flight was delayed one hour. But the kids did well and we ate turkey sandwhiches and soup at the airport before flying home. They were tired and slept on the plane. Andy picked us up at the airport and we arrived at home early enough to enjoy the rest of our Sunday. It was a quick trip but it was nice to visit with family and friends. I grew up in Fayetteville until we moved away when I was 8 years old so the small town feels like home to me.