The Cold Yet Warm Weekend

My little brother was fortunate enough to be drafted into the MLS last year and live his dream of playing professional soccer.  The unfortunate part was when he was drafted to Montreal (yes the one in Canada) over 2,000 miles away from home.  Therefore, we clearly don't see much of him anymore.  So when we found out the first two games of his season would be in Dallas and Houston this year, the plans were made for us to go.  Last year they never came to Dallas and they didn't make it to Houston until October.

As you can read in our Thanksgiving and Christmas posts, Samantha does NOT like to sleep anywhere other than her crib.  To avoid the 2-hour battles of trying to get her to nap and go to bed as much as possible, we decided to head up Saturday and come back Sunday.  The shorter the better!  Little did we know that our baby girl would sleep like a CHAMP with no issues at all!  [Back story: Most kids have a 'lovey' they like to sleep with right?  Well I've given Samantha stuffed animals, blankets, etc.  But what does the kid want to hold on to every night?  The strings of her bumper! (Yes I know bumpers are bad or whatever.  You can report me to CPS.  Go ahead.) No matter how tightly I've tied them, she manages to untie this one particular string and then hold it while sucking her thumb and falling asleep.  Weird, right??  Oh well, she loves the thing!  So we packed up the bumper with her pack n play.  I think that might have made the difference.  Silly kid!]

Saturday we drove up to Arlington while the rain started.  All week long we'd seen the forecast saying it would be COLD and wet during the game.  Unfortunately soccer is played outside... But we packed appropriately and went on our way.  We got to Arlington in time for lunch.  Both Josh's dad and all of my dad's family live in Alrington, so we had a lot of people to see in a short time.  We went to my grandparents for lunch where Samantha was FINALLY able to meet her great-grandparents, great aunt and Uncle and some cousins.  

w/ Uncle Rick, Aunt Barbara and Ty

w/ MeeMaw

Playing w/ cousin Ty

Meeting Gramps

Meeting MeeMaw

After lunch and her great nap, we headed to Josh's dad's house where we would stay for the night.  Papa and Grams (Josh's dad and his wife Julie) lovingly agreed to watch Samantha for the night while we went to the game.  The game started after her bedtime, and with the awful weather, there was no way we could take her.  Again, she slept like a champ for them!

We drove the hour to Frisco just in time to get to the stadium and get rained on.  35 degree temperature with rain is SUPER fun... not!  Unfortunately FC Dallas won, too.  But it was fun getting to be with the family and support Blake.  

Sunday morning we got up and went to breakfast with Papa, Grams and Laura (Julie's daughter).  It was crazy because it was a restaurant that had taken over the building that used to be a restaurant my family went to regularly when we lived in Arlington.  It felt like old times!  Sadly there wasn't a game room anymore though.  That was the best part!

@ breakfast w/ Pops

Then it was back on the road to head home.  Our little princess must be growing up or all the praying we had been doing leading up to the weekend worked.  She made it easy on us and we had a fun time with family.

And now we get to do it all again in Houston in a few days!