The "24 hour" shopping trip to Dallas came at the perfect time this year. My husband was at the end of his two week sick leave and thankfully felt confident enough to take care of the boys so I could spend some quality time with some wonderful girlfriends! Pam, Kathryn, Tracy and myself started down I-35 in the late afternoon on Thursday. The only small glitch being me losing the keys before we even took off. Glad my friends had faith in me :) That night we ate at the Cheesecake Factory, browsed the aisles of Target, then headed back to the hotel for girl talk. Friday we did some major shopping at Ikea, Sam Moon, the mall and that evening found a great outlet mall. I love my girl time!

Here is Pam posing in front of the store that gave us our 'catch phrase' for the trip. Thanks for the side splitting laughter and the million of inappropriate comments that stemmed from your famous quote :)

Ikea! After trying a million different directions and only seeing the store in the distance we finally found the parking lot and were excited to see all the things Ikea has to offer. It did not disappoint! Pardon the squinty eyes . . . we have not seen the sun in over TWO weeks. I found a great student computer table and chair for under $50. Score!

Aaahhh, pedicures. This is right before we hit the outlet mall and my feet were already killing me! Obviously Pam didn't get the memo we were suppose to wear white shirts :) I need to mention that these chair messagers gave me a back ache-not relaxing! Afterwards we hit the local Steak-n-Shake and the strawberry shake made everything better. By now it is 5 PM and we are just now deciding to try out the outlet mall.

We ended up staying at the mall until closing time. I had shopped to my heart's content and was coming home with five pairs of new shoes! We had dinner at the Olive Garden and filled up the car(with the strangest gas pump ever!)and were on our way home. Wouldn't you know the moment we cross the border it begins pouring on us! It was slow going on I-35. Here we are at 2 AM at Kathryn's house. I tried to get a picture of all of our loot. I had taken out the third seat in the Expedition and we had it filled almost to the top!

It was a great trip and I hope we can do it again soon(this Fall?). It is amazing how much can be accomplished in 24 hours :) Thanks for the laughs and memories girls!

I had a hard time convincing my husband that I needed a recovery day. He was unsympathetic when I explained how late I got in, how my feet hurt from walking all day, that my back was killing me from the faulty message chairs and my stomach was queasy from all the yummy food I ate. He just didn't understand :)