Back from holiday

So it's been a long week. We left the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, drove to Cincinnati and stayed until Sunday. It was a pretty good trip but I hate it because it feels like it takes a week or so to recouperate afterwards. There was just no "down time". Our trip consisted of the following:

Leave Bowie around 3:00 p.m. after Rusty gets home from work. Coast along until we hit some rush hour traffic near Frederick. Stop for dinner at Breezewood - the neon jungle of the PA turnpike. Just barely order before bus-full of high school kids arrives. Ever seen the Spongebob where the five buses full of anchovies show up at the Krusty Krab and get all rowdy and such yelling "eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat... EAT!!!"? That was pretty much the scene.



Sean waved at every girl he saw. And what's up with 15-year-olds having tattoos spanning the entire width of their back just above the undie line? Arrive in Cincinnati sometime around 1:30 a.m. Boys decide to party it up with Grandma until around 3 am. Good times.

Wednesday: cousin's wife calls at ungodly hour and we're all awake again by 8 am. Rusty leaves for lunch with a friend from work. I help my mom rearrange three of the tables set up for the 31 Thanksgiving dinner guests. Mom worries that Caitlin will beat her about the head and ears with the previously completed and now totally useless seating chart. I assure Mom that Caitlin only beats people for good reason. We do get a break and Mom and I eat lunch together at BW3 (must speak to someone about Mom's possible addiction to boneless wings). We then stop at mall on way to Lianne's house. Ahhhh. Lianne's house. The only relaxing hour of that day. So nice. We leave, and I lose track of time at this point. Oh yeah, Mom goes home and puts turkey number two out of three into the oven. We do more pre-Thanksgiving stuff and head out to Chipotle for dinner. Pick up Caitlin along the way (Yay, Cait!). So after all that, Cait, my mom and I head to Jungle Jim's because, really, where else do you want to go when you're exhausted and feel like passing out? Of course - the world's largest goofy grocery store. Seriously, I love the Jungle. But even more seriously, I love that they put in a Starbucks. I barely remember the rest of the night but I'm pretty sure I took off my boots in the parking lot.

Thursday. Just a blur of turkey (so yummy), family, loudness, more family, noodles and croutons and even more family. Good god, where DO these people keep coming from? My grandma, my parents and brother and two sisters with their families, one of my mom's sisters and her husband and nine of my twelve cousins (just on my mom's side, remember) plus my cousins' spouses, kids, etc. Good food, but man... very tired at this point. Rusty goes to play poker with my cousins and various other people, I get the boys to bed and pass out.

Friday... what the crap did we do Friday? Holy cow. Oh yeah, how could I forget? Mom took us to see the Spongebob movie. Rusty, Liam, Sean, my mom and I. It was Sean's first movie in a theater (he's a serious Spongebob fan) and the Springdale theaters are seriously very very nice. Huge screen. Good times again. Lunch then Rusty took the boys home while Mom and I and my cousin, Aimee, hit Archivers - a giganto and quite nice scrapbook store in Mason. Which is next door to a Borders. Which serves coffee. Bought Brian McLaren's new book since it was right next door at Borders and all. And they have coffee.

At this point, I'm pretty sure you're sick of reading this (and damned tired too, it's a lot to take in). But suck it up, you asked so this was my weekend.

Ummm... oh yeah, Saturday. Rusty and I get up and drag our tired butts to the storage unit that I have grown to hate. At our house right now, there are three states of being. Things are either in boxes somewhere in the house, in boxes somewhere in the attic or in boxes in the storage unit in Cincinnati. It's the not knowing which state something is in... that's the excitement that keeps me going. Anyway, we go through the rest of the stuff in storage in record time and get home. Mom takes us to the mall to get a new red fleece for Liam (seperate entry sometime later when my fingers are no longer numb from all the typing). No red fleece and it's raining making it a pain in the arse to try to pack the van at the storage place. We decide to stay until Sunday morning. Sunday morning at the storage unit, we pack the van (no, seriously... we pack that thing. The boys can barely move in the their seats) and head out. Have to stop in Mason because we left the diaper bag at Aunt Lynn and Uncle Carmine's house. Crap... when did we leave that? What day did we stop by there originally? I was there and I'm still confused. We did visit Aunt Lynn. Uncle Carmine made me drink Reisling. I think it's the first time I've had an alcoholic bev in front of my mom. I didn't really care and I'm not really a big wine drinker. Regardless, we left the bag and had to pick it up on our way out of town. Rolled into Bowie around midnight Sunday night.

SOOOOOOO. Aren't you glad you asked? Oh, yeah. Yesterday Sean was very sick - really high fever, throwing up, etc. No rest and he was up last night. So even though we're home from our Thanksgiving trip the magic of the holidays just keeps on giving [me a kick in the ass]. HAPPY HOLIDAYS!