A Saturday I'll Never Froget

So yesterday was the official birthday party day of nearly all of Brooke's friends. We were invited to four different birthday parties, but could only attend two...sorry Starla and Emma. But before we could go to any parties, I had to go to my fantastic Saturday morning class....ugh! Once I got that out of the way, we went to Natalie's party. She turned two yesterday and had a fun Elmo themed party. She got this adorable play kitchen, which Brooke thought was really special. I'm sure I'll be hearing more frequent requests to go to "Nanny's" house to play.

She had a great Elmo cupcake cake, which I didn't get a great picture of, that had REALLY dark icing. Brooke had a nice blue mustache.

After a nap for all of us, we went to Molly's birthday party. She turned 3 yesterday. She had a fun Minnie Mouse party where all the kiddos pretended to be kittens looking for mice (toy mice). They took it upon themselves to use their mouths to "catch" the mice.

Hairy mice + wet mouths = yuck!

After Molly's party, I planned to take the girls to my parents' so we could have dinner. Bill had to work yesterday, and was just going to go to church as usual when he got off. I was getting ready to leave the party when I picked up my phone and saw three missed calls...not normal. I didn't recognize the number so I called back and it was our friend Jimmy from church. A friend of his, who had met Bill a couple times, called Jimmy and told him that he saw Bill's jeep out on Sooner Rd stranded. Now why this guy did not stop at that point to see if Bill was still there and needed help, I have NO idea, but....whatever. Anyway, Jimmy and our other friend Sam, were trying to determine if Bill was with me, or needed help. So, I very quickly loaded up the girls and asked Sam to go look for Bill and I would get that way as fast as I could. Seeing as this was just before 6:00pm and Bill gets off at 4:30, he had probably been stranded for a good hour by now, and if he wasn't in the jeep, that meant he was walking in the rain. Now, this is why sharing a cell phone can be a problem...I had our only cell phone!!
As I got closer and closer to the jeep's location, and it got later and later, I got more and more panicky! I was doing lots of "talking" to Bill, asking where he was, and probably a bit of crying too. At one point, Brooke said, "Mommy, you like a blankie?" and offered me hers. Well, that just made me laugh and cry more for how sweet and intuitive she is. I know it's silly to be so hysterical, but I'm a sleep deprived, post-partum hormonal, women...what do you expect. I just couldn't understand why Bill hadn't gotten to a phone after so much time. Then I'd worry that instead of a nice normal person stopping to help, he'd get a crazed ax-murderer person instead. After what seemed like forever, and several phone calls back and forth to the others who were looking for him, Bill called me and said he was at Sam's house. I thought it was strange that Sam would've taken Bill to his house, instead of to church, but I didn't care as long as I knew where he was. So, I headed over there to pick him up. Bill was sitting on their front porch so I asked, "Did Sam just go back to church?" "Sam was never here," he said.
So here is Bill's side of the story. He stopped to get gas after work, and the jeep wouldn't start back up. He had this problem last week too. After a few tries he got it started again, but only made it to Franklin and Sooner (don't ask me where that is, except the middle of nowhere). He walked to the closest station he knew of, at Franklin and Porter, but they said they didn't have a phone he could use....ugh!
So, the next closest place he new he could eventually get help was Sam and Elisabeth's house, so he started walking that way. Somebody did eventually stop and give him a ride to Sam's and he was able to borrow a phone to call me.

He was wet up to his knees and really cold (thank goodness he had a jacket with him), but other than that he was unharmed,,,praise Jesus!!