The right weekend to be in Dallas!

This past weekend, I took a trip to Dallas. I had planned it to get out of Minnesota and warm up a little and since tickets to Dallas are CHEAP (relatively speaking) and I have friends there, I decided Dallas was the place to be. And *yipee*, I picked the right weekend! While I was gone, the high for the weekend was O degrees and the low was -17 degrees (that does NOT include wind chill)!!!! I took Greyson but had left Ben and Madelyn at home. With the exception of the routine excursion to church, they huddled inside the whole weekend. With those temps, I don't blame them! So, now you ask, "what did you do in Dallas?" I was visiting some friends (AKA my sisters-in-law and mother-in-law). One of Ben's sisters lives in Dallas and the others drove in. We had fun visiting, passing Greyson around, painting pottery, watching movies, making meals, dyeing our hair, and going to a high school musical. We had a great time! Here are some pictures to enjoy...

Hanging out at Hobby Lobby - There was a LOT of stuff I wanted

but didn't have room to bring home!

Steph made us a FANTASTIC pasta dinner!
And Christina got the china out for us.

Stephanie gave Greyson a bath!

At Paint Yer Pottery - this was so much fun!

At the high school musical during intermission.
Brandon, Christina's husband, was the music instructor/sound guy.

Highlighting our hair - it hurts to be beautiful!

The only snag in the trip was the flight back from Dallas. I was scheduled to take the 5:30 pm flight non-stop to Minneapolis. We boarded and left the gate on time but as we got out to the runway we pulled off to the side and watched other planes pass us by for about 20 minutes before the captain came on and told us that there was a warning light that wouldn't turn off. They were getting input from the mechanics back at the gate and would try again. 10 minutes later they said that didn't work and we were going back to the gate (ugghhh!) so they could give it a try. So back to the gate to sit for about 10 minutes before they announced that we needed to de-plane (double ugggghhh!!) and that a replacement plane was on its way to arrive at 8pm. As I got off the plane I called NWA and asked what my options were. They basically said that the plane arriving at 8pm was my only choice. So, now I was stucking sitting at the gate for almost an extra 2 hours.... As I was walking back into the gate area, I realized that I hadn't eaten in a few hours so I headed to the food court area. I was surprised to see most of the food joints closed except Taco Bell. It was obvious that the manager had caught wind of our delay and had required his workers to stay on to serve us - the workers were obviously unhappy. So, I got a taco combo and thanked them for staying open. There were a couple of other families with small children waiting too, so we all kinda clustered in the same area and talked and let the kids play together. Thankfully, the plane arrived at about 8:30pm and we were able to board about 9pm and took off without incident. Unfortunately, when we arrived at MSP at 11:30pm, with everyone itching to get off and get to there destination, the jetway (the ramp that extends to the plane) wouldn't connect to the plane (ugghhh again!). We sat there for 30 more minutes waiting for that to get fixed! It was quite interesting watching the jetway go back and forth trying agian and again... and again! The captain even announced, "This is quite comical from the cockpit. Not sure if we have a dumb jetway driver or if there really is a problem, but we will get you off and on your way as soon as we can." Finally, I was able to get off the plane and get home... I'm actually quite fortunate, with all the flying that we have done, we haven't had a major delay like this in a very long time.

Unfortunately, as soon as we got back from Dallas, Greyson started acting sick. It took a couple of days to set in but today he started running a fever and had to come home from school. Now, I have to try and keep Greyson as comfortable as possible and attempt keeping the rest of us from getting sick!