The rest of our trip (part one)...

Well, we had a great trip but it was so long! Two weeks and 5 days and we spent 5 days traveling. We had a lot of fun though. The second weekend we got to spend together in Dallas. On the Friday night (Oct. 5th) Tom's training group was taken to the Texas State Fair and his trainer invited Taylor and I to come along. So we drove to Tom's hotel that afternoon and we got on a big charter bus with all of Tom's fellow trainees and some of the other trainers and their families. It was fun to meet all the people he had been working with all week. They were all so nice. His main trainer Eric passed out tickets and coupons (they use coupons at this fair for rides and to buy food with) and he gave Tom an extra ticket for me and gave us 40 or 50 dollars in coupons. I like the Boy Scouts! Anyway, we had so much fun and it was great to be with Tom again after being apart for almost a week. That weekend we stayed at a hotel close to Tom's training and enjoyed having a relaxing weekend being together. Then on Sunday we drove a couple hours north of Dallas to meet my mom and Taylor and I rode back with her to Benton, Arkansas and Tom went back to his training.

It was nice to spend time at my parents. They (my parents and little sister) all adored Taylor and gave her tons of attention which she loved. Taylor and I went on lots of walks and my mom and I spent a lot of time together. I got to do some shopping without Taylor (which is nice to be able to focus a little better) and I got my hair done. It's a little shorter and darker. And my mom and I went fabric shopping to get material to make Taylor some curtains. (Tom just put them up tonight and they look great mom! We'll have to see how well they work to keep the sun out!) Then on Friday Tom's training got out at 3:00 which I thought was crazy b/c traffic gets bad in Dallas around 3:30 and is even worse on a Friday, but around 3:30 Tom was calling to tell me he had just met our friend Bruce to give him back all the clothes he had to borrow from him (refer to bottom post--thanks again Bruce!) While we were talking I put the phone close to Taylor and Tom started saying "Taylor can you hear me?" and the second time he said it I heard his voice in real life not through the phone and looked all around the room we were in and there was Tom standing at the back window! I was so excited!!! I was hoping he'd gotten to leave early, but he'd said he didn't get to so I thought we wouldn't see him until around 9:00 that night. It was the best surprise! It was great to spend the rest of the day together and we let my parents babysit and went out to dinner that night. Okay, this is getting long so I'll finish it tomorrow and add some pictures...well, hopefully I'll get to it tomorrow!