Road Trip

We traveled to Natchitoches, Louisiana this weekend to watch my nephew play football for his college team, Southeastern Oklahoma. They got beat, unfortunately, 63-12. It was good to see Brad play with the "big boys" though! This picture is of Brad #54, his girlfriend Phylicia, my niece Allyson, Kera & Kyla. So despite the score of the game, the road trip will be a memory we'll always cherish! I had my girls and my niece in the van with me, and we followed my sister in her car with her husband (who was sleeping in the backseat) and my mom. We left Sheridan about 11:30 Saturday morning and met them in Hope about 1:15, ate a bite of lunch and hit the road again about 2:30! Paula and I had been mapping out the best route we thought we should take all week. We originally thought we would cut down from Hope and go through Lewisville and Bradley. But all the online maps were steering us toward Texarkana, so that's the route we decided on. I had borrowed a TomTom (GPS gadget) from a friend of ours, and it had also picked the Texarkana route. So we were armed with a TomTom and 2 or 3 printouts of Google directions!! We did fine until we got to Shreveport. FYI--apparently the shortest route from Texarkana to Natchitoches is through downtown Shreveport!! We were right in the middle of the 256 bridges that lead to everywhere but home when we missed our exit. We were communicating via walkie talkie between our vehicles. My sister is in front of me. I have the TomTom in my car. Did I mention that I'm afraid of heights and bridges?!! So while I am "white-knuckling" the steering wheel trying not to look anywhere but my lane, my sister is yelling, "WHICH WAY DO WE GO???" Almost immediate when we got on the first bridge, the highway split! We had to choose to go East or West. So I'm trying to grab my print out directions, watch the TomTom, use the walkie talkie and DRIVE!! You guessed it--we chose the wrong direction! Never fear though, I regained my bearings and let TomTom turn us around to the correct highway! We made it safely to the campus of Northwestern at 5:30pm for the 6:00 kickoff! One missed highway was all we had the whole trip though! We did get a little nervous on the way home when we had to come back through downtown Shreveport, but we were stayed headed in the right direction! Mom rode home with me and my girls. She helped me stay awake! We arrived back at her house about 2:30 Sunday morning. You can always count on a good time anytime my sister is around. So here's a picture of me and my sis after the game. (Ok, now that I've uploaded the picture, I realize this is an AWEFUL picture of me!!)

Brad was pretty upset with the game, but I thought he played hard. If things work out, we hope to make one of his home games in Durant later in the season.