Vacation, Part I

Well..I took a blogging vacation and a real one. It felt good, but now I'm back. I shall start with the car ride to Branson.

THE DRIVE
I was super nervous about the drive because by the time we get to Harrison, Amelia is usually sick of the ride. Asking her to go another 45 minutes seemed to be pushing it. However, in true Amelia fashion, she was totally unpredictable and slept almost the whole way.

This was her face when she woke up and I thought we were in for it.


YIKES!!! But, after a yawn and some stretching...



She was the happiest girl ever. Whew...disaster averted.
Oh, and we were the happiest parents ever.

CABIN
We dropped Amelia off at the cabin with Mom and Dad and I was more upset than I thought I would be. Ross even surprised me with a, "Man, I already miss her," when we pulled out of the driveway. This is just another contradictory moment in parenting. We were looking forward to a few days of just "us" and the minute we leave her, we are yearning to spend time with her. Whew. We went to eat that night and saw babies everywhere. I spoke to complete strangers and told them that I had a little four month old precious girl with her Gammy and Gampy. Like they cared...

You can tell that she was neglected at the cabin.

We barely got there in time to see her swim in a big girl pool for the first time. (with a new bathing suit and new floaty from Gam and Gamp)


It was a good call to have her that close by for our first trip away and I am thrilled Mom made that call. We snuck over to see her a few times, but definitely were doing much better by that second day.

I won't speak much of the Powdered Formula Disaster except to say that I got a distressed call from Dad saying that Amelia wouldn't take her formula. We rushed over there so I could feed her and sat around wondering what we were going to do. I pumped so that Mom could have it that night, and then a miracle happened. She loved the new formula Dad bought. It is the pre-mixed Enfamil in the can and she lapped it up. YUMMY. I am giving her one bottle a day here at home to keep her used to it.

HILTON
We get to the Hilton and they do not have our reservations. Nope, no Halsted. Sigh. Nothing under Heather or Ross..nothing under Halstead, Halstedd, you get the point. I wouldn't have panicked, but Ross was in charge of the reservations.

"Sir, could you have booked them at a different Hilton?" HELP. Anyway, they finally found them and we were good to go.

Our room was great and the bed was wonderful. So pillow-toppy-soft. This is probably due to sleeping on the couch the better part of four months, but still. We lounged by the pool, took a mid-afternoon nap, stayed up late, and slept in. Glorious.

ENTERTAINMENT
We went and played mini-golf and Ross beat me...badly. The course was awesome and it was open until midnight. I didn't really care that I got beat because I got a delicious chocolate-chip ice cream cookie anyway. (Yes, I realize how scary the ice-cream picture is of me, and I don't care).
We went to see SIX perform and they were incredible. I loved, loved that show almost enough to buy a Branson SIX t-shirt. We also went to see the Haygoods perform and they were pretty good also. Did I mention that SIX was an incredible show?

Hmm..I almost didn't put this, but I must. We went to watch The Hangover at the movie theater and it was so inappropriate. But, it was one of the funniest movies that I have seen in a long time. So, it was inappropriately worth it. Mom and Dad bought our show tickets and our movie tickets for our anniversary. We win.

Monday morning we drove back to Harrison to start the second part of our vacation. Pictures and post in the works.