Shopping with Mama

Today was the best flight situation ever.  The good Lord was with me all the way.  I have traveled a ton, but I have not had such an uneventful airport/travel experience.  "Uneventful" is a good way to have an airport experience.

My day started at 4 am with a little Bible reading at Tricia's house then I ate my oats down in her kitchen.  I tried to be really quiet so that I would not wake her up!  I was successful in getting out of there quietly and on time.  I had my directions printed off and double-checked them with Tricia last night.  Made it to airport and the cheap long term parking was full, but they directly my perfectly to a new place for overflow long term parking called Mount Elbert.  No problems.  I wrote down the aisle I parked in and hopped right onto the shuttle.  I made it through security, no problems and to my gate, no problems and onto the plane, first seat in the middle, no problems and landed, no problems and Mama picked me up, no problems.  NO PROBLEMS!

When you travel by yourself, you can get sit pretty much anywhere there is an open seat.  So, I got to sit right in the middle in the front seat with tons of leg room.  On the plane, I sat next to a neat lady who was a runner and was getting married in August.  We had a nice chat and it was super fun!

After Mama picked me up at the airport, she took me to Granny Lee's new condo in STL.  It was beautiful!  We then decided to go shopping while we had the opportunity.  She worked really hard all week so that she could take these four days off with me.  So we took this wonderful opportunity of time and together~ness to go shopping all afternoon.  Most of you that know me, know that I am not a "shopper."  My kind of shopping comes in big garbage bags from my cousin who passes down all her clothes to my sister and me.  We also do alot of our shopping at G.W.'s (an upscale name for Good Will).  :)  So, this was a special time.  I will tell you what, we had fun!  We did most of our shopping at T.J. Maxx and Marshall's.

Really good pasta with lemon garlic sauce and fresh veggies.

After we went shopping, we had to get something to eat, so we went Zia's on The Hill and had Italian.  Mama had been talking about this one place with really cool steel statues and stuff, so we asked our waitress where to go.  With it only being a mile away, we found it easily.  Here are some photos!  It was quite a treat, there was stuff everywhere!  It was quit overwhelming, but cool!  Glad we went!

Fun picture for Heath!  (I am not really conceited.)

Once we got out of the 5 o'clock traffic in St. Louis, we headed to Springfield.  We did one more quick stop at T.J. Maxx.  THEN, we got to go HOME!  Almost home, we were passing through Rochester and Mama pointed out a new chocolate/ice cream store, Cocoa Blue.  As we passed it I said, "Wait go back, it's open, I see people in there!"  So, sure enough, Mama pulled over and we went in.  To our surprise, it was Andrea and her boyfriend, Mike.  Awesome!  We ordered ice cream and it was wonderful!  It was a raspberry cheesecake, white chocolate ice cream with an oreo ribbon!  Also, they had some 'misfit' chocolate that they could not sell so they asked if we would like to try them?  Was this a trick question?!  We all enjoyed the dark chocolate carmel morsels in good company!

Me,  Mike, and Andrea at Cocoa Blue!

After our surprise ice cream fellowship, we went home and I had a style show for my mama with my new clothes!  Thank you Lord for a wonderful day!