September 19, 2024

(click for today's pictures)

• I hit snooze one too many times this morning so I was scrambling around. I was just about to head upstairs to make sure that Graham was up when he walked through the living room. He was off to his class before I came back from my walk. 
• I read to Whitman and Keaton for a little bit this morning, and then everyone started on their school work. I knew that we didn't have much time this morning so I marked quite a few things off of their lists because I wanted to be mostly done.
• Graham, Campbell, Keaton, and Whitman all decided to come with me to visit Reagan today. Anderson opted to stay home-in hindsight, that was a good thing. We couldn't have gotten him back in time for work at Raymar, and he would have had to miss his class (which probably would have been fine.)
• We left the house around 11 and picked up Grannymom and Grandpa and Nonna and Pops. We pretty much filled the big van up. We zoomed on down to Arkadelphia without any problem. We found a great parking spot at Reagan's dorm.
• When Reagan walked out the door to meet us, a girl walked by and said "hey, Reagan." I guess a few people know her name. We all walked up to her room-it was fairly tight with 10 of us in her room, but we were all able to look around. It was neat, and it was pretty much just like we left it on move in day. 
• We then drove around campus, and Reagan pointed out all the buildings. Then we went to Walking Taco to eat. It was kind of like an authentic Tacos for Life. I think that everyone enjoyed their food. Whitman ordered street corn, which he didn't know what it was and didn't like, but we all liked it. The food was good, and Reagan told us all about her classes.
• We then drove back to campus, and she walked around with Graham, Campbell, and Keaton for a little bit. While she did that, the rest of us drove through down town Arkadelphia. We found us a little bakery and stopped. Virginia bought us some cookies which we devoured after dropping Reagan off.
• It was a good thing that we had those cookies, because our one hour car ride took us about 3 hours to make it home. The interstate pretty much stopped, and we creeped to an exit which we took. We criscrossed through all kinds of back roads and I even turned around twice in the middle of the streets. 
• Graham had to be at Raymar at 4:30 which wouldn't have been a problem at all, but we managed to get him there almost at 5. (He was fine with this though.) When we did eventually pull back on the interstate, we met right up with a big bus that we had been right beside when the traffic had stopped-so all of our backroadding didn't get us ahead any, but at least we were moving. 
• The company was good, and the conversation was good, and the air mostly worked so we still had a good time on the way home. The only catch to our late afternoon was that Keaton's birthday party was tonight at 6. 
• For a little bit, I was sweating it wondering if we would get home before her people started arriving or if we would just turn it into a surprise party for her! Thankfully, we made it home about 5:15 which gave us plenty of time to get things done in the house 
• Keaton's people started arriving a little bit before 6, and Robby had already come home with supper for everyone-panda express-he had a lot of food for everyone so much so that the when the boys did come home they had lots of options left for them.
• The girls played games, opened present, had cake, jumped on the trampoline-I think that they all had a really good time. It was quite noisy for sure, but I think that Keaton had a blast. I'm so glad that we did make it home for her birthday party! So it was pretty perfect day all around!