I'm a Pepper!

As I have mentioned before, while we were in Dallas visiting my sister after Christmas, we made a quick road trip to Waco, TX to go to the Dr. Pepper Museum. I bet many of you didn't know such a thing existed, but it does! And since we all know how much Patrick's loves Dr. Pepper, this stop was a must. We had a lot of fun just being goofy, and taking pictures of everything. 

Here is Patrick in front of his little piece of heaven.  

They had a huge room that was just full of all the different Dr. Pepper vending machines over the years, from the very first one back in the 1800's to the newest one that was just released last year. It was kinda cool to see how they have evolved through the years.

Um, I don't think we were suppose to put our children in a 100 year old vending machine... oops, our bad!  

Here we are in front of an old Dr. Pepper delivery truck.  My sister, brother-in-law, and cute niece came with us, so that is my BIL Jeff and niece Bailey!

Our fam

They had lots of cool things to see and read about the history of DP. One thing we thought was cool was a theater where you could watch all the DP  TV commercials throughout the years. It was funny to see some we remembered, to laugh at the clothes from the 80's, and watch people dancing in the commercials singing "I'm a Pepper!" 

One of the coolest parts to the museum was their old fashion soda fountain. There they had all kinds of things to get, we tried an original Dr. Pepper, made from pure sugar cane. It was really good, and yes, it did taste different then what you usually get at the store. We also had DP floats, and even a nice hot Dr. Pepper they had special for the holiday season. It wasn't too bad, but we all preferred the cold stuff.

The boys thought this was a pretty fun thing too, especially since we let them have some Dr. Pepper, which they never get. We bought funny souvenirs at their gift shop. They even had DP BBQ sauce and Marinade. We haven't tried those yet, but I'm sure they will not disappoint!

"A nice cold Dr. Pepper is like a warm hug from Jesus."  --Patrick C. Patton

We love Texas!  :)

Texas!

So a few days after Christmas, we flew out to Dallas to go see my sister and her new baby! My whole family was gonna be there for my nieces baby blessing. We had a great time with everyone. Many laughs, good food, relaxing... it was wonderful! Patrick went the whole week without a Xanax, that is amazing, it really was a nice relaxing vacation if that happened!!

You of course can't go to Texas without enjoying a little Texas BBQ. So we went to this place called Rudy's. Patrick and I laughed when we drove up, cuz it was in a gas station, but my sister and brother in law swore it was great BBQ. And luckily for us, it was awesome! The boys loved it too, they chowed down every last bite of their lunch.

Brayden loved the BBQ ribs, he ate them all himself! I was shocked he ate so much. He still is talking about those ribs, and how he wants to go get more. Too bad it's so far away!

Here I am with sweet little Bailey.... (sorry our eyes look creepy, I tried to fix the red eye on them, and messed it up, and now I can't figure out how to make them normal. Anyone know how to do that on iphoto???)

I bought her this adorable little dress a while ago, I love shopping for little girls! I don't get to do that much...  :)

I love her chunker legs!! They remind me of Conner's chunky legs he had when he was a baby.

I love going on trips. I love holding sweet little babies. I love having fun with my family. It was so great to see everyone!

While on our trip to the Dr. Pepper Museum in Waco (I promise I'm gonna post about that soon!) we stopped at this great place called the Czech Stop.

It was also in a gas station. Apparently some of Texas's greatest treasures are found in gas stations!  :)

They have these pastries called Kolaches, and WOW, they are yummy!

They have lots of different kinds, they were to die for! 

This one was our favorite, Strawberry and Cream Cheese. So good. Seriously!

Patrick was especially excited about this place. He served his mission in Budapest, Hungary and the Czech Republic boarders Hungary, so they had lot of food that he loved from his mission, or very similar. He was especially excited to learn that they will ship any of their food to you. So he is excited to get his Hungarian meat (I'd try to spell it, but I know I'd get it all wrong, so I'm not going to attempt it!) and cheese, and pastries delivered right to our door. He hasn't had some of those things since on his mission.

***Just FYI, I wasn't that big of a Nerd to take pics of the Czech Stop, I got these pics off of Google Image. Just thought I'd throw that out there to keep some sort of respect.  :)*** 

Christmas at the Patton's...

...totally stunk this year!!!!!! Let me tell you why...

We put the kids to bed on Christmas Eve like normal, and we went about our "business" to get things ready for Christmas morning. After we were done with that, Patrick and I were laying in bed watching our new flat screen TV (thank you Chrysalis Christmas party!!!) and we hear Brayden start to cry. I go into his room and he is burning up with a fever (totally came out of nowhere, I hate it when that happens!!) and he was complaining that his ear hurt. So I gave him some Tylenol and told him to go back to sleep. Long story short, it was a very long night of him crying because his ear hurt so bad, and none of us got much sleep. We did manage to sleep long enough for Santa to come. Poor Brayden barely lasted through opening presents before he wanted to go back to bed. You can kinda tell by his face here that he just doesn't feel well at all.

However, Conner felt GREAT!! He was super happy about his new Power Ranger scooter, and rode it around the house all day!

Brayden did try his out, but he only made it down the hall once, then was done. He really wasn't feeling good.

My sweet Conner enjoying some of his presents from the grandparents!

By about noon, we had decided we have tried everything we could think of to help Brayden feel better, but nothing helped, he was just getting worse. His ear started to hurt just to touch it, and he could hardly hear out of it anymore. So after trying really hard to find an Urgent Care open on Christmas Day (yeah right, no such luck) we decided it would be best to take him to the ER. So off to Centennial Hill Hospital we went. It wasn't as horrible as I thought it would be in the ER, I thought we would be there all day, but we were in and out fairly quickly, for an ER at least. Then the bigger challenge I faced was to find a stupid pharmacy that was open on Christmas Day. After several failed attempts, and many phone call, I finally found one open over in Summerlin, about 30 minutes away. So I got back in the car and went to get his meds so he could start feeling better soon. (after all, we were leaving to fly to TX in one more day!) They were pretty busy, so I had to wait for 45 min to get his prescription. By now, I was starving, I hadn't eaten since breakfast, and it was about 6pm. So how convenient, there was a Jack in the Box across the street from the pharmacy that had it's drive though open. It was pretty crowded too. So I ate Christmas dinner from Jack in the Box... by myself... in  my car. Oh, and I failed to mention also that this whole time Patrick was not feeling well and was starting to get an abscessed tooth. PERFECT!!! Dentist's aren't open on Christmas either!! Patrick however suffered through until the next day and even though his dentist was still closed, we called her and she called in some meds to help Patrick last until we got back from TX. Merry Christmas Patrick... you get a root canal and we all get medical bills!!! YAY!

The good news, we got to Texas and had a great time with all my family. Everyone was feeling better by the time we left for Texas.

More about that trip to come later....

Brayden's birthday!

Why, yes... I realize that I'm very behind on blogging, but we have been gone, and life has been hectic, so here we go....

On Christmas Eve we celebrated Brayden's 6th birthday. He was very excited all day and it was almost torture for him to wait to open up his presents until his dad woke up.

He got a lot of cool thing, at least he thought so. He was very happy to get a Nerf Gun as you can see...

His Iron Man toy was also a huge hit!

After opening his presents we were off to lunch at Chili's, one of Brayden's favorite places to eat. We even let him have a Dr. Pepper with his lunch as a special birthday treat. He thought that was awesome since we never let him do that.

Then we went to Blockbuster and let him pick out a game for the Wii to rent and we all came home and played it together for a while. Then it was cake time! He was very specific in wanting not just any Batman cake, but a Dark Knight Batman cake. So this was as creative as I got. He thought it was cool though, so that is what matters.

He's not excited or anything.....

He had a great day!