Family Tradition

When Casey and I used to live in Wisconsin, every December we would pick a night to go down to see the lights in Riverside Park in La Crosse. When we moved to Minnesota we decided to start a tradition where we would pick one night and go back, and this past Saturday was our night this year. We packed up the girls, drove to La Crosse and started by eating at one of our favorite restaurants, Fayze's. After a delicious dinner, we went to visit with one of my old roommates and her family. We then bundled up the girls as Camryn chose to walk through the lights instead of drive (which although it was extremely cold, the line to drive through was blocks long so she made a good decision!) and headed downtown. Each year something new is added and it's really fun to watch the girls' faces as they discover new and old favorites like the fire breathing dragon and the elephant that spouts water all over himself.

The ride home is one that I will remember most from this year. We were just past the Eyota exits when all of the sudden I heard a bell warning us that we were going to run out of gas! I looked at Casey as he was driving and all he said was "I'm really surprised it didn't go off sooner". Now, if you know me at all you know I'm a chicken and wont even let the gauge go below a quarter of a tank before I fill it up, but Casey has a whole different outlook on this. Since I have known him we have never run out of gas, so I was really hoping that he knew how far we could make it to get to the next gas station. We continued to drive and got onto hwy 52 and weren't quite sure where any gas stations would be on Marion Rd. or 11th Ave so we decided to go down broadway. Well, as we took the Broadway exit we had almost made it through the turn when Casey said, "It just went". I looked over and he was doing all he could to turn the steering wheel as the truck died. We pulled over in front of Shopko South and started to laugh. We called my dad to bring us a few gallons and sat and waited. As we sat there for those LONG 10 minutes we learned that Camryn has less patience than we had originally thought. Kylie was out cold sleeping, but we heard Camryn sign about ever 30 seconds as she continued to ask when grandpa was ever going to get there!

I know our family tradition of going to the lights will continue, I just hope the ending to this year's trip isn't something that we ever experience again!