Are We There Yet??

Last Friday was had finally counted down to our vacation! I really liked being able to leave in the late afternoon/early evening because it meant that I had all day to pack the rest of our luggage, toiletries, and food. As we prepared to go, a couple "blog-worthy" things happened. Actually, it was an incident and a picture.

First, the incident. I had taken the kids to Walmart in the morning for a few last-minute grocery items and lost the girls. Actually, they lost me to be more precise. Kelsey had to go potty, so Olivia was going to take her and come right back. I had told them where to find me (and of course they hadn't listened) so when they came back and I was a couple aisles away, they couldn't find me. I started getting worried and went looking for them, and they had gone to a cashier up front to see if they could page me over the intercom. Well, the intercom wasn't working, so they took them over to the dressing rooms sit and wait for me. Meantime, I had gone to the front to get them paged and happened to get there the same time as an employee that had come up front to figure out what to do about my kids. I told them that I had couldn't find my kids and this guy said that they had them - a girl and a boy, right? I responded that no, I had 2 girls. He looked confused. Then I told him that my younger girl had short hair and was wearing a camouflage shirt. That explained it. When I finally got the girls back with me and we had all calmed down enough to finish our shopping, I told Kelsey that the guy had thought she was a little boy. She then looked at me, utterly surprised and said, "What? With MY eyelashes?" I told her he just hadn't been looking very closely...

And now on to the picture. I know babies fall asleep in high chairs all the time, but Connor had never done it for me before. Isn't he cute?


We finally left our house a little after 4:15 and made our way to Ben's office to pick him up and drive out of town. The first leg of our trip was to Tennessee to a family reunion with my side of the family. The plan was to drive to Nashville and get my brother and his wife from their hotel, shower, and head on to Sevierville (near Gatlinburg) for the reunion. We made really good time so ended up pulling into a rest area about 40 miles outside Nashville with the intention of sleeping a little. That plan didn't involve 2 bickering girls and a muggy Tennessee morning. After a couple hours of torture, we gave up and went to breakfast and Danny's hotel. Since we got there early and woke Danny & Jessica up, we waited outside while they showered and dressed. Connor didn't like the grass, so sat with his legs as much in the air as he could.

In exchange for "shower privileges" we took Danny and Jessica to one of their favorite restaurants for lunch - Steak 'n Shake. And no, Danny's teeth are NOT green. He's just a goof-ball.

And, as for our kids... observe the greatest inventions in the world: the portable DVD player and a headphone splitter. At times, it was almost peaceful...