Vacation 2013

Well, I took a vacation. I haven’t had a full week off in as long as I can remember; I always took a day or two here and there. This year I vowed to take a break.

When I turned in my request for time off to my boss I mentioned how I haven’t had a real vacation in so long. She countered by mentioning that I had 8 weeks off just last year. Well, folks, I did, but until you have a newborn baby yourself you will never understand how that is 100% no-where-near a vacation. Her daughter is 12 so she must not remember. :-\

Anyhoo, I took off the entire week of Memorial Day. So did Gene. So did my Mom. We are a close-knit family who likes to take time off to spend it together.

We had originally planned to head to Panama City, FL for a week of beach lounging. That flew out the window at the realization that Emma hates being in the car for even 30 minutes. We then changed our plan to Denver, CO with many stops in route. That was a no go for the same reason (who were we kidding?). So then it was going to be a 2 day trip to KC followed by a few days at the Four Seasons at the Lake of the Ozarks. Nope, nobody to keep the dogs. One night in KC for the Cards/Royals game then back home right away. No. Staycation? Yes.

Saturday – Unofficial Day 1

Gene had to work so me, my Mom, my Dad and Emma went to a BBQ in Pacific (Ralph’s house). It was a lot of fun! I ate too much and we played some poker. Gene showed up late and it was officially vacation! Yay!

Sunday – Day 1

Gene and I started our day late. Emma slept until about 7am! Wow. We headed out for lunch after showers, playtime and Emma’s first nap. We decided to kick of vacation at Applebee’s. Isnt funny how men seem to let the women feed the baby when they’re out? Needless to say that Emma ate a ton of my food so I wasn’t very full at all. After lunch we did some shopping at Target and then I took Emma to baby Desmond’s 1^st birthday party. It was lots of fun (and exhausting). Also, Day 1 of vacation was our date night of the month. We went to dinner at Cugino’s on Lindbergh (eh, it’s just okay) and then went to see Hangover III (great!). We ended the night with a drink at Tony’s on Top and headed home to get some shut-eye.

Monday – Memorial Day – Day 2

We slept in until 9am. That was the first in a long time as my internal alarm normally goes off by 7. We showered, and then headed out to get some breakfast before picking Emma up. Waffle House. Yum. I hope everyone had been to Waffle House before, but if not, get the hashbrowns [at least] scattered-smothered-covered and a waffle, of course. Afer we ate we picked up Em and headed out for some serious shopping. We went lots of places and eventually bought a new couch too. We made it home around 4pm. We had lots of playtime and dinner and I konked out just a bit after Emma did (8:45pm maybe). FYI – Emma had her first hot dog at the furniture store. She LOVES them.

Tuesday – Day 3

Emma woke around 4:30, but Gene got up with her. This means that he leaves the lights out and gives her a bottle so she falls back asleep, so he can sleep more. Grrrr. She slept until around 8am! We watched some tv and pondered what we would do for the day. We did a little shopping again. Not realy buying anything really, and then we decided to BBQ that afternoon. So we bought some stuff to cook and invited my parents over. We all sat outside and had a great time until it rained. They headed home and we just lounged around the house playing with Emma the rest of the night.

Wednesday – Day 4

This is our work day. The big to-do for our vacation as to go through our “basement” to donate any clothing we don’t wear. For those of you unaware of our “basement,” our entire laundry/storage room was covered with clothes. Huge piles of clothes. Everywhere. It was awful and embarrassing. So, we dropped Em off at my Parents’ house, put together her water table so she could play with it, and we got to work (after a quick stop at the donut shop). It took us from 10am until 5pm but we went through each item of clothing. By the end of it, we had 18 trash bags (30-gallon) stuffed with clothes to donate. It took 3 trips to the clothing drop box. I hope the Make-a-wish foundation gets some good money out of them. I still need to buy some more storage and shelving to hold the clothes we kept, but it is so much better now.

Thursday – Day 5

This is another work day. Gene and I dropped Emma off around 9am this time and headed to U-haul. We rented a big truck and drove back home to load up the old couch. It was so heavy. Then we tore up the old carpet and got it ready for bulk pick-up, dropped the old couch off at Goodwill, and then headed to Menards (after some Chinese Buffet). We bought our new carpet and padding and then headed to the furniture store to pick up the new couch. We made a pit stop on the way home at Sonic for a shake and once we got home (around 2pm) it was easy work from there. Or so we thought. It was one thing after another and it took us until 6:30pm to get the carpet down! We then unloaded the couch, took the U-haul back, went home and arranged the couch, put things back in place, and at 8pm we picked up Emma. FYI – I sliced my leg open with a razor blade, pulled up part of my left thumb nail to where it bled, hammered my left index finger (it bled under the nail), sliced open the top of my left thumb and stubbed both big toes multiple times.

Friday – Day 6

This day was a mess. I couldn’t even tell you what I did really. We played at the house, washed some clothes, went out shopping, ate at Dave & Buster’s, and then at 5pm we dropped off Emma so that Gene and I could go to the Cardinals game baby-free. Well, as you all know, the game was cancelled and the storms moved in. When the game was called we had every intention of going to see a movie. Little did we know that we’d be racing home to get inside before the brunt of the storm hit. We were home less than two minutes when it reached us and we headed for the basement. It really didn’t sound that bad, but we lost power and once we left to go get Emma we saw just how bad it was. Our neighborhood was hit hard. Trees down, power lines down, pools collapsed, windows shattered. It was chaos trying to get to Emma and just as bad going back home. We were without power all night.

Saturday – Day 7

I had intended on having my eyes checked on Thursday, but with the lengthy carpet installation it didn’t happen. Instead I went at 9am to have them looked at (yes, I have an Rx again and I’m looking into a lasik enhancement). My parents met us all at the eye doctor so my Dad could look at some new glasses. After we were all said and done we decided to get some breakfast. After we drove to 2 different places and both were extremely packed, we decided to do an early lunch at Culvers. We were the first ones there. Haha. Gene and I didn’t do the make-up game that day. Instead we decided to go see another movie. Well, low and behold, we got to the theater (the Mills) and it was without power. And the Cardinals had a great game. Ugh. We drove to the mall to go to JCPenney again (I wanted some baby-free time to really look through the clearance racks) and then we went home to salvage any food that we could from our powerless fridge. We dropped off the food and picked up Emma and decided to stay at Mom and Dad’s house to BBQ while they went to the Casino with some of Mom’s work friends. We got home right before Emma’s bedtime and I had just enough time to find some things that light up to give us enough light to see. Luckily the weather was pretty cool so we didn’t overheat. Oh, and the power came back on at 11:06pm!

Sunday – Day 8 – Last Day

Sunday was a very good day. We started it off at a book fair at 10am (you know, after showers and such). It was the last day of the event so we could fill up a bag of any size for $5. We left with 2. One just of books and MOVIES for Emma. Yay! After that we headed to Kimmswick to see my 96 year-old Great Aunt Tiny and attend the Strawberry Festival. Just so you know, the festival is a wash and I wouldn’t waste your time. But, they did have some good fair food! On the way home we stopped by Target on the Rock Road to get Emma some prunes and they were still out of power – first time I ever shopped in the dark. When we got to Mom and Dad’s we loaded up our car with the books and all the bags of food we took there and headed home to get ready to go back to normal life.

All in all it was some great, much-needed, well-deserved time off for our family to spend together. The only problem now is that I miss my Emma even more. I’m actually contemplating taking some unpaid time off later on in the fall maybe. Why not? She’s only this little once.

Jenni