Weekend Warriors

Three weeks ago, in mid-November on a humid Friday morning, we set our alarm for the unholy hour of 3 a.m., gathered our toothbrushes, brewed a large pot of coffee, loaded a sleeping baby in the car and started driving. Destination: Orlando, Florida.

We were on our way to celebrate Aden's first birthday (my sister said to start using their whole names because she doesn't like keeping track of all the letters) and to also have Thanksgiving dinner together as a family. Big weekend full of lots of fun! I wanted to spend as much time with Becca as possible, thus the early departure time. The plan was to get three good hours of driving in before Olivia ever woke up and the pit stops started. The plan would have worked perfectly, because Olivia slept until 7, except that I started drinking coffee the second we pulled out of the driveway. Which means that Chad was looking for a McDonald's exactly one hour into the trip. I believe this is what the literary world calls foreshadowing, because I have never stopped so many times in one road trip in my life.

Anyway, after inspecting the majority of the bathrooms along the I-10/I-75 corridor, we got to the Turnpike, also known as The Road That Eats A Paycheck's Worth of Quarters. After feeding the beast, we finally made it, just after lunch time. C and I unpacked and we headed over to Becca's apartment, where our Weekend O' Fun commenced. I have no photos from the first day because did I mention I got up at 3 a.m? Olivia had a great time playing with all of Aden's toys and watching him walk all over the apartment. The men went together to the Honey Baked Ham store to secure our Thanksgiving meat while the ladies stayed at the apartment with the kids. After eating some delicious Chinese takeout for dinner, C and I told everyone good night and we all hit the sack by 8 p.m. Eastern.

I'd like to say that we all woke up refreshed and ready to take on the day after such a good night's sleep, but that would be a lie. The mattress was so bad on our bed that C thought we might be sleeping on a box spring. Despite our rough start, we were super excited to begin our day with some quality time with Aunt E and Uncle T, who were sharing a place with us for the weekend. Becca had to work that morning, so we all took our time getting up and dressed, then after lunch the babies played together again. We made a couple of runs to the grocery store to prepare for our Thanksgiving meal and took the babies for a walk. There is a children's playground in the center of the complex, and Aden likes to watch the big kids play there so we stopped for a few minutes. It turns out that Olivia and Aden loved the slide and both of them went down it with a little help. C and Olivia also played on a rocking horse. We took a ton of photos of all of this fun, but they are all on Honey's camera. One of these days I will remember to get some of them to post here.

No photos, total bummer, I know. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so I'll be extra wordy to compensate. You're welcome.

Just kidding. All of the photos I do have are from Saturday evening and Sunday before we drove home, so you're finished with the excessive reading.

Speaking of Saturday evening, there was a very important football game being played, and we all loaded up to head to the local Mellow Mushroom to eat and watch Auburn give Georgia a run for their money. While the game turned out to be a disappointment, dinner was not. Aden wandered around the whole restaurant making friends and exploring, and we all laughed and visited with each other while enjoying delicious specialty pizzas. C and Uncle T got their picture taken with a crazy car in the parking lot while I prayed they wouldn't get shot by the car's owner:

It's kind of hard to tell, but this car is parked with the front right tire up about 2 feet up in the air. It was sitting out in the middle of nowhere and was quite impressive.


Honey managed to scoop up both of the babies and wrangle them together long enough for a photo.

After dinner, we all headed back to the apartment where the clubhouse has a huge game room complete with large TV. Philip The Pool Shark schooled me several times through the second half of the football game. The excitement of the day finally caught up with Olivia, and this is how she spent the rest of the game:


I'll show you our Thanksgiving meal in the next post.