Western Wear Near Me

This year, we had school until December 21st before Christmas break.  I had such a hard time getting a handle on Christmas this year with teaching.  It felt a bit chaotic.

We made some Christmas cookies, as per our usual tradition.

Little Dude oft forgets a shirt.

My parents got everyone snow shoes for Christmas, so we went snowshoeing on New Year’s Day.

From left to right:  Daisy Mae, me, Sweet Pea, and my mom.

The snowshoes were fun and everyone enjoyed it.  David was a bit fussy about the situation and didn’t feel snowshoes were necessary.

“Taylor.  You don’t get my life.  I walk through the woods when there is snow all the time for hunting.  I don’t need these.”

“David.  Just put them on.  MY PARENTS BOUGHT THEM FOR US FOR CHRISTMAS.”

So.  He wore them at the beginning and then took them off and carried them.  They weren’t all that necessary for that day.  But it was fun, nonetheless.

The best decision we made was to give ourselves one extra week of Christmas break by BOOKING A CRUISE for the first week in January.  I mean, seriously!  Are we not brilliant?  You may recall we took a cruise not so long ago.  The airline had lost Sweet Pea’s wheelchair so they gave us travel vouchers that expired in a year.  So, naturally, we just had to take another trip!

This time, it was just my parents who joined us.  We flew into Long Beach, CA on a Saturday morning.  We arrived around 10:30am and had arranged for a kind man named Hum to pick us up.

We start collecting our bags and notice two bags are missing.  David told me one was his and the other was Daisy Mae’s.

Excellent.

So, it takes the airline a solid hour to help us through this issue.  They tried to find the bags.  They had to talk to four different managers.  Finally, they asked to see proof that we were taking a cruise.  So I showed them the boarding passes.  The time was now 11:30am and the final boarding for the boat was at 3.  There was no way the airline would get David and DM their bags on time.  So they wrote us a check to replace the two bags.

Meanwhile, poor Hum has been waiting for an hour for us to figure this out.  He agreed to help us out further by taking us shopping before boarding the boat.  He took us to an outlet mall.  There was Nike, Gap, Forever 21, Levi and H&M.

My dad and LD stayed in the van with the bags.

My mom, DM, SP, and I went off in search of a new cruise wardrobe for Daisy Mae.

David and HD went off for David.

Now.  David is a bit particular.  And he does NOT shop at Nike, Gap, Forever 21, Levi, or H&M.  His style can be found at places like North 40.  He took out his phone and Googled “Western Wear Near Me,” but had no luck.  So he and HD had to go off and try to find something that might work.

Never in my life have I shopped like I did that day.  I just kept swiping the credit card.  It was insane.  We weren’t shopping for things DM might like.  We were shopping for what would work.  And we could not find DM ONE swimsuit.  So that was a bummer.  And we were all nervous we would miss the cruise!  And do you know what would ruin a wonderful, relaxing cruise?  Not being on the boat when it set sail, that’s what.

We finish up and Hum, the hero of the day, took us to the cruise ship.  We paid him handsomely for his time and somehow even got him to agree to come and get us after the trip, too.

We get out of the van and David starts to stuff his purchases in my suitcase.

“Taylor!  This suitcase is full of my clothes.  I was wrong.  Your suitcase was the one missing, not mine.”

It was a devastating moment, friends.  My girls were super sweet and told me I could share with them.  And maybe some things would work, but my 37 year old self cannot completely fit into a 16 and 14 year old’s wardrobe very easily.

So, we start trying to figure out how to handle this situation.  Do we have time to go back to the outlets, return David’s purchases, and buy stuff for me?

So we make a plan with my parents and David goes to grab the purchases again out the suitcase so we could return them.

“Taylor!  I was wrong!  This IS your suitcase!  Oops!”

For the love.  I am happy to report we made it onto the ship and we all went straight to the lido deck and ate our stress away at the buffet.

We absolutely had a blast.  It is so much fun for our family.  David was a bit fussy the whole trip over his Factory Outlet wardrobe.  He had to wear stretch jeans and he felt like everything had gone wrong with the world.  Everyone else agreed he looked the nicest he had ever looked.  He informed us he was burning everything when he got home.

My kids played a ton of basketball.  And who wouldn’t want to play basketball while overlooking the ocean, I ask you?

We ate.  Often and a lot.

Our first stop was Cabo San Lucas.  David, DM, and I walked and walked in search of a swimsuit for DM.  We found one.  It cost many pesos.

Photos from Cabo:

Photos from Mazatlan

When David was outlet shopping, he found a t-shirt at Levi’s that he could “tolerate.”  So he bought one in every color.  The shirt had an itchy tag on the side, so David kept ripping the tag out, and also ripping the shirt.  It was awesome.  So, we were walking down the street, saw a little sewing shop, and David have his shirt mended.

Puerto Vallarta

 

The girls were very into mango smoothies and taking photos for Instagram.  I enjoyed photo bombing.

We had a wonderful dining room staff once again.  They are so friendly and nice.  DM was the most adventurous at dinner and tried all sorts of new things including cow tongue and fried alligator.

The last photo there was taken with our wonderful wait staff on our last night, which was also my parents’ 40th Anniversary!

Sadly, we had to go home and back to the real world.  When we got home, we discovered our freezer broke!  We were able to make room for everything in other freezers except for 6 bags of strawberries from our garden.  So on Tuesday night, I made it all into jam.  It was late and exhausting.

And that’s what we have been up to!

Happy Sunday!