Here's a Trip Down Memory Lane

Ryan decided he wants to collect soda bottles.  I have a rather large Coke collection - been collecting since my teens.  I love the look of Coke bottles and all that old diner style stuff.  Ryan wants to collect a variety of soda bottles - and T-shirts too apparently since he has several different T-shirts - Coke, Sprite, orange Crush, Mountain Dew, and more.

The one bottle he really wants, and we have had a super hard time finding, is a Mountain Dew bottle.  I mentioned this to a friend of mine and she pointed me in the direction of a store on the other side of town.  We decided to make a day of it (way back in July) and go to lunch at a Mexican restaurant about halfway there.  And of course, we invited my parents and brother to join us in our adventure.

Lunch was great, but Ryan was anxious to check out this store.  So off we went.  It was a pretty neat place full of all kinds of candy and soda that you can't find anymore.  When, low and behold what did they have but . . . The Pop Shoppe sodas.

Total walk down memory lane.  When we lived in Virginia that was the name of a store - The Pop Shoppe.  You would take these soda crates and fill them up with whatever soda you wanted.  You didn't buy them in packs.  And they had the most fun - and delicious - flavors.  Such as pineapple, black cherry, cream soda, grape, I think there was even strawberry.  Stuff you couldn't get anywhere else.  We all had our favorites and you always knew which ones they were because they were the ones left until the end.  Once you drank the sodas, you put the empty bottle back in the crate and then when you went back for more, you took the empty bottles back to them and got a refund towards your new purchase.  It was fun.  And us kids always looked forward to going so that we could help pick out our favorite flavors.  

To make the day even funnier, while I was standing there reminiscing with my brother Kelly about going to the shop, his cell phone rang.  It was another brother, Warren - who had just moved out of state - calling.  When Kelly told him where we were and that we found The Pop Shoppe sodas, Warren started asking if he remembered that soda place we used to go to and picked out the flavors that we wanted.  Kelly was like, yeah it was called The Pop Shoppe. 

Here I am with my parents holding one of the beloved
The Pop Shoppe sodas.  Yum!