Our Thanksgiving trip

Posted on January 8, 2013 by Christy

A few weeks before Thanksgiving I got a text from my sister Jolene (who lives in CA) asking if we were coming home to visit for Thanksgiving. I told her no immediately, because well, we’re broke. She responded that I could at least talk to Waldo about it before I shoot the idea down and that it would be really cool if I came because Jody (our other sister and Jolene’s twin, who lives in OK) and her kids were going to be there too.

So Waldo and I talked about it and after he said no (because we think very much alike), we started looking at how much it would really cost. After all of the figuring we realized it wouldn’t be THAT much money since we could stay at my Dad’s house and most of our food would be taken care of because of the holiday. So I texted Jolene and told her that as long as there were no major blizzards on the mountain passes we had to cross, we’d be there.

A week or so later we found out that Jody bailed on us, something about needing to work. We forgave her, but it would have been so much more fun if she’d have been there. Jolene figured that since Jody decided to stay home we wouldn’t take the trip either, but Lily was so fricking excited that we couldn’t change our mind even if we had wanted too.

We, or I should say Waldo and his Dad, kept a close eye on the weather reports for the week leading up to our leaving. Everything looked good so we headed out Wednesday morning. The drive went great surprisingly well. We got rained on a tiny bit, but the only snow we saw was way off in the mountains no where near us. Then we got to Donner Pass and hit some rain and a lot of fog.

You should be able to see a whole lot further then you can here.

We got out of the fog fairly quickly and then it looked like smooth sailing. Boy were we silly to think that driving to California the day before Thanksgiving would be a good idea. Right outside of Sacramento we hit the bumper to bumper holiday traffic. It sucked! It was also the point where I took over driving, Waldo finally wanted a break. He says it was a coincidence, but I’m still not sure.

We finally got out of the crazy traffic about an hour or so outside of my Dad’s house. Thank goodness we finally got to my Dad’s and out of the car. We took Lily in the house and sat her down and told her to tell my Dad about her trip and we went out to the car to get our stuff. I know this doesn’t sound like anything worth mentioning, but for Lily this is a first and is totally amazing. We felt this was a good sign as to what was to come on our trip. I’m going to spare you the suspense and tell you that Lily got totally overwhelmed by half way through Thanksgiving day and went back to her standard shy self. But she still had a great time.

We went to my Aunt KK’s house for Thanksgiving dinner.

My Memaw and Pop were already there when we arrived, along with Kk and her husband Dixon. My sister Jolene and Olivia were suppose to be meeting us there, her son Max was already there too.

KK and Pop

Me and Uncle Dixon

Me and KK

Memaw and Pop at Thanksgiving dinner

Olivia was the only one that Lily cared about seeing so the fact that Jolene was taking her time was killing her. Finally we got ahold of Jolene and I told her I was coming to get Olivia and then she could take her time. Max went with me and it was very nice to get some alone time with him. I can’t believe he’s 16. It’s true what they say, kids grow up way too fast.

Olivia

Pop, Olivia and Lily

Very quickly Lily and Olivia were off to play in the playroom. It was so cute, seeing them together again.

Lily and Olivia

Olivia spent the night with us at my Dad’s, in fact she stayed with us almost the whole time we were there. The girls loved it.

Lily and Olivia accidentally sort of matchy matchy

Sleeping princesses

It works out great that Lily’s carseat is still backwards because it made it easy for them to talk and share tablets. This was how they spent all of their time in the car.

Happy travelers

Friday morning we went to Memaw and Pop’s for chocolate gravy (a huge tradition for our family). My Mom met us there.

Olivia and GG (my Mom)

Olivia

My Mom, KK and Memaw

Jolene did some Black Friday shopping so when she got to Memaw’s she tried to get some shut eye. HAHA, silly girl.

Sleepy Jolene

Lily got super overwhelmed during breakfast because of all the noise so Waldo had to take her outside for a little while to relax. The family on my Mom’s side is very loud when we get together, well some of them are anyway. After breakfast we took a bunch of pictures.

Me, our Mom and Jolene

Me, Memaw, Mom and Jolene

Me, Memaw, Mom, Pop and Jolene

Me, Lily, Memaw, Max, Olivia, Mom, Pop and Jolene

Olivia stayed with us the rest of the day and the girls couldn’t have been happier. After we left my Grandparents we went to visit my cousin Melissa and her family for a few hours. I realized when we got home that I didn’t take a single picture of Melissa and her family and I was so mad at myself I could have spit.

Saturday we decided to take Lily and Olivia to the zoo. Jolene, Max and KK met us there and we had a blast. The weather was perfect, the zoo wasn’t that busy and we had good company. What more could we have asked for?

Lily and Olivia

Waldo and Lily

Lily, Waldo and Olivia

Olivia, Jolene, Max and Me

Lily feeding her old friend

Lil

Olivia and Lil

Max and Olivia, such sweetness

Max and Olivia

Lily and Nosey

Max

Lily and Olivia

Waldo and Lily

Jolene and Me

Lily and Olivia

Right before we moved to Idaho the Zoo had just started working on a new Sea Lion enclosure. We finally got to see it all finished and I have to say that it was awesome. You could see the tank from above, level with it and below the water line. We got there right at feeding time and we probably could have spent a lot more time than we did, but Lily had to potty and we all wanted lunch.

After the zoo we went to lunch and then to my Grandparents to tell them goodbye. It’s so hard to say bye to everyone and especially them.

Pop, Me and Memaw photo-bombing us.

Memaw and Me

Back at my Dad’s Lily and Olivia helped get the Christmas tree decorating started.

Lily, Olivia and my Dad

Oh pretty

Little Christmas Elfs

I loved how much fun the girls had together, and we hated saying goodbye to Olivia. I’m so glad my sister was ok with giving her to us for a few days. I hated saying goodbye to the rest of my family too, but Olivia was the hardest.

My Dad and Me

We did finally say goodbye and headed out for home. The drive home was a lot better than the drive in. There was some fog in central California which didn’t surprise us at all. We did have to make a stop at a Target in a small town an hour or two from my Dad’s house. We left Lily’s Hello Kitty cup at my Dad’s and so we had to get her a new one. Otherwise it was smooth sailing all the way home.

I can’t wait to see my family again, but for now I’m so glad that we are home.

Random shots from the Zoo

Posted on November 16, 2012 by Christy

I have started using our nice point and shoot lately so I don’t have any mobile shots to post today (not that I’m really good about doing a random shots post every Friday, but I try), but I liked these so I thought I’d post them.

Lily looking at the lions.

The Fam.

Lily and Waldo looking at the giraffes.

Lily doing her witch face.

Cutie.

Lily on a tiger.

My sweet girl

Posted on October 31, 2012 by Christy

Today we went to the local library’s music and movement program and had a little fun time together. After the music and movement we stay for story time. To go along with Lily’s new found chattiness (which has continued to hold up) she’s venturing out from me a little. She sat on the story time carpet with the other kids (this is a major first) and I got to sit fairly comfortably on the little chairs all by myself. By the last book Lil was in a chair right next to me, but this was a huge first step and I’m very proud of my girl.

Anyway, the librarian read the kids a book and then they did a felt board activity together and I noticed that there was one felt piece left in the bucket. I got up and handed it to the librarian. She thanked me and as I sat down Lily looked up at me and said “That was very nice of you Mama, thank you”. All of the women in the story room awed and oohed at her and I just glowed with pride at my sweet girl.

Pumpkin patch

Posted on October 12, 2012 by Christy

This weekend we tossed on Lily’s 2012 Halloween t-shirt (I get her a new one every year) and headed to The Patch. It’s the same Pumpkin Patch that we went to last year. We really liked it and will probably keep going year after year for as long as we are here.

I have a thing for white pumpkins so we found a couple that were the perfect size.

On a side note this trip to the pumpkin patch was the first time I’ve used my real camera since July. I could hardly believe it when I was looking at the memory card. Only phone pictures since fricking July. I’ve got to remember to grab the real camera more often.

This is my favorite picture from the Pumpkin Patch.

We ended up coming home with the two white pumpkins for painting and one pretty good side orange one for carving.

While we were paying for our pumpkins we went into their little store and saw Waldo’s brother’s honey for sale. It’s raw, unfiltered, local, yummy honey. This was the first time we’ve seen it for sale anywhere, it was pretty cool. I also bought one of their home grown loofa’s and came home and cut it in half because I thought it was too big. Huge mistake, now I have this tiny loofa that does nothing but annoy me because it’s hard to hold on too. Live and learn.

We had such a nice time together, as is the norm. Now I can’t wait to carve pumpkins and put Lily in her witch’s costume and go trick or treating.

We went on a little vacation and all I have to show for it is some pictures. Is anyone surprised? I’m not. Part 2

Posted on October 2, 2012 by Christy

Here’s part 1 of our little vacation to visit friends in Montana.

We woke up on our first full day back in Whitefish and after a little work for both of us* we went to visit our friends Anthony and Maggie. We spent a few hours with them and had a blast. I don’t know what on earth was wrong with me, I didn’t take a single picture of them. I can’t believe it. I did take a few pictures of Lily and Waldo while they were playing video games there. Silly me.

After a few hours with Anthony and Maggie we headed to see Jack; who is the main person that we wanted to see. While he didn’t stop me from taking pictures of him, he threatened bad things if any of the pictures ended up on the internet. So boo. Here are some pictures of Lily instead.

While Waldo, Jack and our friend Malcolm talked about boring boy stuff Lily and I played with her dress up Olivia set.

Lily has only seen Jack once in the last two years, but she’s heard so much about Uncle Jack that she was so comfortable with him. She wanted nothing more than to play with him or at least near him. She wanted to show off, it was really cute.

That first night in Whitefish Jack and Waldo went out and played neerdy games with other boys and Lily and I hung out in the hotel. The next day we went to breakfast with Jack. Lily was true to form and wanted to show off her cute Hello Kitty.

Later that day we decided to take Lily to the park to feed some ducks. We bought some cracked corn (I had no idea this was a real thing, I thought it was just part of a nursery rhyme) from the gas station across the street from the park. The ducks liked it, but I wish we would have had bread to feed them. Ducks seem to like it better. Oh well, it was about the experience and spending time together, not the duck food.

BTW Lily’s shirt says ‘My Mom is Totally Awesome’ because you know she is. 🙂

This next picture is my favorite of the whole trip.

This one comes in a close second.

You will have to employ your imagination a bit here and add some cute pictures of Lily, Waldo and Jack on a bridge feeding ducks. Or a really really good picture of Jack squatting so he’s at Lily’s level talking to her while she feeds ducks (my 4th fav pic of the trip) or the three of them at a picnic table. He’s making you miss out on a lot of really good pictures. Luckily for me I have printed those along with a lot of the ones you see here on my blog into a collage that I love.

After feeding the ducks got old we had a little picnic and Lil feed the rest of the cracked corn to the sea gulls. They were very interested in the corn.

That evening Waldo and Jack went out to get drinks and Lily and I did the hotel hang out thing again. He didn’t get full on drunk because he’s not that into drinking, but he got a nice buzz and I got some really cute buzzed texts from Waldo.

I should take the time to mention that Waldo had been coming down with cold symptoms all day and by the end of the night Lily was right on his heels. This was such a bummer because we had decided to leave Montana a day early so that we could drive to Portland and visit Becky (my BFF) and with this cold we weren’t sure how that was going to go.

The next morning we were suppose to have breakfast with our friend Jess and Jamison and their little Teagan. But by then the threatened colds had blossomed completely so we called off breakfast because I hate spreading germs especially to little ones. Instead we spread our germs to the general public and had breakfast at the restaurant Jack works at so we could get one more goodbye with him.

Jack made Lily a butterfly pancake. He made her a very over the top Mickey Mouse pancake the first morning, but I didn’t get a picture of it before Waldo cut it up.

I’m betting the kids at the other table were jealous since all they got were standard round pancakes. One of the benefits of knowing people in high places. When Jack came out to see if Lily liked her pancake we were able to give him the little canvas she drew him. I didn’t get a picture, but it was really cute and she wrote Mama on it all by herself. She added an extra letter, but hey she’s 3.

On our way out of town we stopped and saw our friend Gil for a few minutes (he was in the middle of a meeting) and then we headed out. Our plan was to get as far as Spokane that night and then get to Portland the next afternoon. While we were driving to Spokane we discussed our options and we made one of the hardest decisions ever and that was to go home after Spokane and not to Portland. It just wasn’t fair to Lily to spend another sleepless night in a hotel and it wasn’t fair to me either. At the time it was the best and really only right decision to make for our kiddo. The plan was to go to Portland for the weekend in September. Well that had to get pushed back because Becky was going to be moving so we decided that Mid-October was best. Now it looks like that won’t happen either. I’m so bummed and wish that we would have said ‘lets go to Portland anyway, screw the kid’, but oh well.

Here’s a view of how we spent the night at the motel in Spokane. Note the tissues and sad people.

Overall this was a great vacation, the only thing that would have made it better was getting to see more friends. I can’t wait to do it again.

*I guess you could call it job security, but Waldo and I are the only ones that do certain parts of our jobs so we still have to do them on vacation, sick days, every day really. Excluding weekends and some national holidays I haven’t had a full day off in over 3 years. I guess I can’t really complain because a full day for me is about 3 hours, but still.

***All pictures on this trip were taken with our phones so some of the indoor pictures are a little…bad. Sorry.

**Edited to add: Waldo informed me that my sequence of events is a bit off. I decided I don’t care. I got all of the important facts, just maybe not in the right order.

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Jinxyisms

Taking life one day at a time.

Category Archives: Us

Our Thanksgiving trip

Random shots from the Zoo

My sweet girl

Pumpkin patch

We went on a little vacation and all I have to show for it is some pictures. Is anyone surprised? I’m not. Part 2