Road Trip...With a Surprise!

We are back from our road trip to Tulsa for Laurie and Damon's baby shower...well really, it was Laurie's baby shower. Damon was just an innocent bystander and designated carrier of heavy gifts. The trip itself went about as good as we could expect. Olivia slept for a large portion of the leg from Amarillo to Oklahoma City. Just outside of OKC she started to get a little fussy, so it was a very good thing we were stopping to see some friends there. We visited with our college friends Erik and Brandy Wallace and Carol Hinther. Erik and Brandy have two children, Charlie who is two and a half and Zachary who is seven weeks old. We hadn't been to OKC to see Erik and Brandy since Charlie was a few months old, so it was good to catch up. But, there was an alterior motive to us stopping by to see them...one that Amanda was unaware of. You see, this past Saturday was also Amanda's birthday. The previous week, Brandy and I had been discussing getting a birthday cake to surprise Amanda at dinner Saturday night. Brandy and Erik had planned to come up to Tulsa Saturday for the baby shower and they were going to bring the cake with them. But, a forgotten prior obligation kept them from being able to attend. So, that left me trying to figure out how to get the cake up to Tulsa without Amanda knowing. I asked Brandy to "wrap" the cake to make it look like a baby shower gift for Laurie and Damon. It worked like a charm. She never questioned the gift and I got the cake to Tulsa and into Damon and Laurie's house without incident. More on the cake later. Erik, Brandy, and Carol got Amanda a water foot massager for her birthday which she tried yesterday and really enjoyed it.

With the exception of some construction delays close to Tulsa, the trip between OKC and Tulsa was smooth. We got to Damon and Laurie's house around 6:30, unpacked the vehicle (which is a lot more involved task with a 4 month old), went out to dinner, went back to the house, chatted for a while, then went to bed. Olivia slept decent in her pack-n-play. She woke up a little more often then she would in her crib, but overall it worked pretty well. Damon and I made breakfast for the girls (Amanda, Laurie, and Laurie's friend and former college roommate Shayla) then they went out shopping before heading to the baby shower. Damon and I took Olivia with us to Waffle House for breakfast (Damon and I have a loooooong history with Waffle House...it's a tradition for us to get breakfast from there.) then we went to the baby shower to make sure everything was okay there and to reunite Olivia with Amanda. Once the baby shower was well underway, Damon and I left to go back to the house to get the cake. Earlier in the week, Damon and I decided P. F. Chang's would be a great place to have Amanda's birthday dinner, so he set up reservations. We dropped off the cake and went right back to the baby shower to get all the gifts back to the house. The baby shower had gone really well with Damon and Laurie getting a lot of really good stuff.

After a little down time at the house, we set off to P. F. Chang's. The meal was great and the waiter had Amanda thinking she was going to get a piece of cheesecake for her birthday. After the meal was done, the waiter comes around the corner with this beautiful birthday cake. The look of shock on Amanda's face was priceless!


The cake was a chocolate cake with a strip of rasberry filling in the middle. It was my attempt to replicate the awesome chocolate/rasberry cake we had at our wedding. Although it didn't match the wedding cake, the birthday cake was very good. Amanda was completely surprised and she said she really enjoyed her small but special 30th birthday celebration.

The next morning, we got up, packed up the vehicle, met Carol for breakfast (Carol's husband Tyson joined us toward the end of breakfast), then headed back home. Driving home on a Sunday afternoon was uneventful and we got back home around 6:30 Sunday evening. It was really good to see all of our friends again. It's scary to think that the next time we see Damon and Laurie, they are going to be parents! We can't wait to see their little girl! Here's a picture of the group:

Here are some other pictures from this weekend and also a picture of me doing housework today with Olivia in the Snugli facing forward for the first time. See Jennifer, the Snugli does work!