Braden's 6th Birthday!

The last day of our drive back to Texas just happened to be December 6th which also just happened to be Braden's 6th birthday. He was pretty concerned about having to spend his birthday in the car, but we tried to make it as enjoyable as possible for him. I even made him some very special pipe cleaner animals to play with on the way. Braden was so super sweet about it too. Every time I would make a new one for him he would respond with, "Thanks Mom, this is the best birthday ever!"

Our last leg of the journey was from Tucumcari NM to home (ovbiously). It is about an 8 hour drive. However, we were in a hurry to get home and Brent shaved off 1.5 hours of the trip that day. Pretty impressive if you ask me! It helped that our van has a monster gas tank and that we dehydrated the kids. Our first stop of the day was just north of the DFW airport, and the only reason we stopped then was because we were afraid we weren't going to make it the last 45 miles home with the gas tank on Empty. I must say that the kids were troopers and did a marvelous job. We were definitely happy to be home, though.

Once home we all scrambled to put a spectacular birthday together for Braden. Everyone pitched in to make him a cake and to wrap the presents that we had brought back with us from Utah. The best present of the day was from Aunt Lindsay. It is the coolest nerf gun you have ever seen. It was a hit with all of the boys in the household. The next best thing was the plug and play star wars game. Our kiddos don't have a wii or xbox or any gaming system. So they are always excited to see any sort of electronic game. Overall it was a great day for the little guy.