Impromptu Vacation

Anton and I were feeling all stressed out and tired of the boring scene here at home so we decided to take a mini impromptu vacation. And since Andrea is about ready to have her baby and we've been meaning to visit them again it was decided on as the destination of choice. So on Wednesday we headed off.

We have a strange obsession when on roadtrips. We always have to stop and eat at Cracker Barrel. We even have the map that shows all the locations of all the Cracker Barrels across the whole country. Well, we just so happened to plan our departure time so that dinner time would fall at the exact same time we were passing a Cracker Barrel. How convenient!!

I don't know what I love so much about this place since the food is kindof greasy and not good for you at all, but it has served us well on many a trip. I think it's because they serve huge breakfasts all day long. Ella loves it because I let her eat pancakes for dinner, see:

Alex loved it because they had chairs just his size!!

We made it to Andrea's just in time to put the kids to bed and soon afterwards head that way ourselves.

Thursday was a hang around the house day, completely planned of course. They have a pool in the backyard and that was where we spent a good bit of our afternoon. While we were cleaning out the pool prior to our swim I met this little guy:

He lives in the pool lining. He posed and smiled and let me take all sorts of pictures of him. Andrea hates these guys. At night they climb up onto her windows and doors waiting for bugs to eat. Frogs to her are like spiders to me. Yuck.

Alex loved being at Andrea's house because he had so much space to run around in.

Anytime we made him come inside he cried. Poor guy. He's an outdoor boy for sure.

Friday was the day I was looking forward to since the planning of this trip. See I have another obsession besides Cracker Barrel, one much bigger, and that would be IKEA. Almost my entire house is furnished and decorated with things from IKEA. When we moved down here to the swamp the closest IKEA is 6 hours away. I've been going through serious withdrawal. Well, Andrea only lives 3 hours away from an IKEA and that's close enough for me!! So we tossed the kids in the car and headed off.

I don't know what it is about this big blue and yellow building that just sends pitter-patters through my heart but I love this place. When we lived in MD we'd go just for fun. This trip was all business, though. Alex was in desperate need of a dresser and I wanted some kids sized stuff for our play area and a chair for the living room. We were quite successful. Here is some of the haul in action:

The new chair and lamp with the existing IKEA furnishings.

Kid sized fun.

This is the dresser we got Alex:


It's much redder in real life. I love it.

After this exhausting but fully satisfying shopping experience we headed back towards Andrea's. We met up with them at a restaurant called Buffalo Wild Wings. Alex was being such a cutie while we waited forever for our food.

He has recently discovered his ears and nose and is constantly sticking his fingers in them. It was the highlight of our terrible dining experience.

But we made up for it when we got home by playing with the horses. Andrea has lots of horses.

This is me with my boyfriend Ozzie. He's the sissiest boy horse you will ever meet. He's always getting beat up and picked on, but I love him. He will let me pet him for hours. He's very sweet and if I were really brave maybe I'd ride him. But for now we are just friends on the ground.


Ella got to go for a ride. She loves riding the horses at Aunt Andrea's house.

Alex hopped on for a ride too.

Ella was giving all kinds of love to BoBo the pony. (I think this is so GROSS!!!!)

A cute one of Alex trying to get in the barn because we had the fence shut.

Our final day of vacation found us heading to a local water park. This was another reason we went to visit Andrea. Their water park is $5 per day while ours here is $20 a day. Big difference. We had so much fun and the kiddie play area was absolutely perfect for Ella. She loved it!

Look at the excitement!!

Anton had Alex duty most of the time. That entailed keeping Alex from drowning since he thinks he can swim. It's a tough job.

He's laughing here, I promise.

And here is our gracious hostess. She is due any day now and has more energy than I do not pregnant!! The 2 boys behind her are hers. The older one was in time out and the younger one was taunting him. I love how sweet and happy Andrea looks while her boys fight away in the background!! So funny!

We had lunch at the park and Alex ate an entire foot long hotdog by himself!! I've never seen him pack away food like that before. I'm in for trouble. Better start stocking the cupboards now!

Speaking of hotdogs, here is a funny story about my nephew.

This is Lane. (He wasn't too happy just then.) And on this particular day we had hot dogs for lunch also. Well, Lane is famous for eating food without swallowing. He just takes bites, chews and spits it out. Interesting nourishment methods. Probably not the most effective. But hey, he's 2. So on this day his hot dog was eaten in the usual manner. However, today he was having lunch with a pick-up truck too. Now what does one do with half eaten hot dogs? Well, this of course:

He packed them all up and let the truck driver take them away. (The dogs ate well that afternoon.) Too funny!!

Back to our vacation, after the water park we said our fairwells and headed back home. Ella commandeered my camera in the car. She took all sorts of pictures, but her best were her self-portraits:

She's getting good.

We got home to a broken air conditioner. It didn't get really bad until last night. It was a long hot night in our 90 degree home. Ugg. Luckily the repairman was able to come first thing this morning. Now we are basking in our 79 degree home. It has been running all day long to get it back down. I love AC.

So now that you've spent hours reading about my vacation I'd better stop. Have a great day!