Happy 30th Birthday Zach!

Enjoying some Bigz

Zach's mom and brother came all the way from Abilene

The very patient friends

Nurse McGee performing a comprehensive assessment

 So Friday Oct 15th, we began our usual afternoon commute from Laredo to San Antonio...with many surprises awaiting us. One of them was planned.  We have some sweet friends (thank you Mary Hogan) who had helped organize and were attending a surprise party for Zach's 30th birthday at Bigz Burgers that evening.  The plan was that Zach and I would get into town from Laredo early Friday evening and arrive at Bigz with a whole crew awaiting and ready to celebrate.  That was the plan.  About 15 min into our trip Zach realized he forgot his phone...so back we go to retrieve the phone.  That only put us 30 min behind.  No big deal at this point.  We still had plenty of time.  We were cruising along I-35 N, now at little less than an hour from San Antonio, when all of a sudden traffic stops.  Stops.  Hmmmm...so we wait.  5 minutes.  10 minutes.  15 minutes.  I'm very anxious now.  Zach would describe it as freaking out.  Maybe so.  I'm sending stealth text messages to some friends that are going to the party to let them know what was going on.  People are walking around on the highway.  One truck driver decides to do some push-ups.  We make a friend from Central America.  30 minutes.  We are out of time.  I finally convince Zach to ride up on the shoulder further to see if we could get off.  All the while, he's telling me I need to calm down..."Leah. It's not like we have a party to go to or anything."  Right.  Finally we found an exit to get off the still stationary I-35 and thanks to iphone GPS, were able to backtrack through some random country roads to another 2 lane highway, with our Central American friend following.   We eventually were able to circumnavigate the shut down I-35, and finally make it into San Antonio.  We arrived a Bigz, almost an hour late to a group of very sweet, patient friends, including Zach's mom and brother.  Zach was completely surprised and we had a great evening celebrating his birthday...finally!