What a weekend

Saturday morning, Ava and I packed up and headed out. We went to Little Rock with my mom and Stephanie for Steph's volleyball tournament. We spent Saturday morning doing some shopping and then headed over to where the tournament was held. We dropped Steph off, and I met up with my dear friend, Chenin. She took Ava and me out to her fiance's house to meet their puppy (and to show me where she'd soon be living!)! We had a good little visit with their pup and then headed back into Little Rock. Chenin dropped me off at Starbucks to meet up with another friend of mine.


This is Ava with Jennifer. Jennifer and her family lived in Fort Smith and we were the best of friends in junior high. It was so wonderful meeting up with her and catching up! She is expecting her sweet little baby boy, Parker, any day now, so it was especially fun to see her all cute and pregnant and talk about mommy things! I can't wait to meet her little man!

After our visit, Jen dropped Ava and me back off at the volleyball tournament. We caught two games that evening. Afterwards, we met back up with Chenin and her fiance, Chuck, for a fun-filled dinner at Macaroni Grill! By the time we got to our hotel, it was almost 10, and with the time change occurring that night, it was like it was 11:00!

We woke up on Sunday and headed to church. After that we had lunch and stopped back at the mall for Stephanie to get some clothes we didn't have time to get the day before. We went to Steph's afternoon games. Chenin came back up to watch and spend a little more time visiting, and I'm so glad she did. Of course, Ava didn't really care about getting her picture made with Chenin. It was almost the end of the day at this point, and Ava had had enough.

Ava with Stephanie's 2nd place medal


The drama didn't start until it was about time to leave. Stephanie's team had to ref the last game so I headed out to the car to load up Ava, her stroller, etc. She was incredibly tired and cranky and was hopeful she'd fall asleep and get some rest. I had started the car so the air would be on and thought it started funny, but didn't really think about it and proceeded to load everything in. When I got in, it said there was reduced engine power. I turned it off and started it again and the same thing happened. So I turned it off, and then it wouldn't start AT ALL! I tried several more times with no luck. Chenin came back to see if she could help and the dad of a teammate came out too. That car just wouldn't start. Chuck (Chenin's fiance) brought some tools out so he and the dad could try a couple of things, but no luck. By this point it was almost 6:30. Zach and my dad started out to head down to get us. Stephanie ended up leaving with a teammate so Zach ended up staying and my dad continued on. Chenin so graciously offered to drive us halfway to meet my dad so we weren't just sitting there waiting idly. I'm so glad she did because we would have been sitting there another two hours and wouldn't have gotten home until after midnight. Mom had to leave her car sitting and they had it towed and taken in this morning to find out what happened. We finally got home last night around 10:30 and it felt so good to get here. What a mess that was! But, thankfully it happened somewhere where we had people to help us and weren't just stranded. There is never a good time for something like that to happen, but it could have been much worse. Overall, we had a fun weekend!

(To see a couple more pictures of our weekend, go here and here.)