MO Fun for us

Rose and I spent our second and final week out and about at my sister’s house in Washington, MO. Rose was right at home with her two cousins Steve and Dan—with an older brother of her own, two boy cousins were right up her ally. Em and I talked, baked, and watched a whole season of Psych. For the first time in a while, we didn’t do any projects when we got together. All the projects I wanted to do were back at my house and Em was just starting the glorious morning sickness phase of pregnancy, so we settled for some quality relaxation together.

All ready for church on Sunday. Rose and I left church early and went home to have lunch with my Grandma Brown at her nice retirement home. It was good to spend quality time with her, and I’m glad Rose got to play with her great-grandma a little bit. I enjoyed watching Rose hold Grama’s hand and walk around the big dining room with her while Grama introduced us (aka showed off her great-grandbaby) to all of her friends. Rose pulled out all the stops and gushed charm on everyone in sight.

 

Monday night for FHE, we went to Super Smoker’s for some good quality BBQ. St. Louis isn’t even the southern part of the South, but they can still hold their own on the pulled pork sandwich scene. I love testing all 6 flavors of BBQ sauce. My mouth is watering right now while I type this. Mmmmm. I guess I’m more of a southern girl than I thought…

Trampoline time! It was pretty hot outside, but what kid can resist a trampoline? I even had to get out there and bounce around and play a few rounds of ring around the rosy.

This video about sums up the week: Rose playing in the foreground while Steve and Dan wrestled in the background.

Playing with her cousins’ Captain America shield, cowboy hat, dagger, and Transformers mask. I should really get Rose some girly toys sometime. Maybe.

We went out for some cold, creamy frozen custard. They give kids a tiny cone for free at this place. This is the same place that Jay had his first ice cream cone a year ago. Eventually Rose just slurped the whole scoop into her mouth. Burr! The look on her face was so big—big cheeks, big eyes. But she didn’t give up. She swallowed that cold lump right down, and when I showed her that she could eat her cone, she crunched that down too.

Annnnnnd, you guessed it—I made another bacon mushroom swiss white pizza. That’s kind of how I pay rent when I’m a-visiting. The crust was per-FECT-o this time, not to boast or anything. It’s just a tricky thing to get the pizza crust to that nirvana-esque state of chewy but not tough, thin but not crunchy, soft but not soggy. Nailed it! (after all those Psych episodes, Shawn Spencertalk was bound to seep out somewhere).

LEST you think that all we did was eat and watch shows, here’s what I did every morning to be worth of a couch potato afternoon with my prego sister (prego people don’t have to do anything to merit laying around; non-pregos need an excuse):

RUNNING!

I love to run. I adore moist cool summer mornings in Missouri—that’s exactly where I trained for my marathon, so after all that quality time in that climate, how could I not feel at home in that fresh humid air? I BASKED and ran at the same time, if that’s possible. I was only planning on running 2 or 3 times while I was there, but every morning that delicious air begged me to come out, so I ran every day but Sunday.

 

One day I brought my camera to capture the ZEN of this country road. Em lives right on the edge of town, with easy access to this perfect country road. It makes me so happy.

All of those Missouri hills rather destroyed my flat-lander’s gluteus, and my trick hip flared up, but those discomforts were well worth it.

Corn!

Barn full of giant hay-biscuits! Ahh, so satisfyingly rustic. I should’ve taken this picture in sepia. My childhood of jumping, sliding, and rolling in heaps of hay makes me really appreciate a well-stocked barn.

This tractor sign has always been a fave.

Heaven, part A

And heaven, part B. Part C is the lemonade, but I don’t have a picture of that.

We LOVE Chick-Fil-A!

We love COUSINS!

I love my sister!

Nebraskatime

Rose and I spent our first week away in Nebraska. My best friend/college roomie Lauren (Laurs) was staying with her family there for a month while her husband was abroad, so we all crashed at the DeNys house. It was so good to spend time together again after over a year of mere phone calls. And Rose is only 2 months and a week older than Emma, so it was fun to watch them start building those bonds of friendship. They WILL be best friends one day, we just know it.

Emma took a couple of days to warm up to her future best buddy.

We did everything together. Rose LOVED having girly toys to play with. They passed these necklaces back and forth all week.

They ate food in the nude.

ZZZZZZZZ

All ready for church. Two little purple princesses.

They never smiled at the same time! I was so happy to finally crack the Emma seriousface and coax a small smile out of her for this picture.

Rose went shopping.

We made pizza. Wherever Jeff or I go, the famous bacon mushroom white pizza is requested. And we happily oblige. This pizza turned out to be superbly scrumptious.

Laurs formed the crusts and I was the saucier (pronounced sauce-ee-yay, pour les non-frances). Does that make her the crustier?

We went to the Omaha Zoo one day. I love seeing all the kinds of animals and reading about them. There were TWO white tigers! Sweet.

We love our jogging strollers.

They both passed out after only an hour and a half of zoology. Rose is so ladylike.

Like all zoos, there was an earsplitting train. It didn’t disturb two tired one-year-olds!

Can you find the mallard duck? The ducks were more or less walking on the fat Japanese Koi fish, swarming to gobble up crumbs from passersby. For some reason I was fascinated by the disgustingness of those fish, especially the white ones. Eeeeew.

Eventually the children woke up and saw more zoo. The jungle building was my favorite—it was this winding path through a giant indoor replica of a jungle, with animals swingin and swimmin free all over the place.

One more—cute redheaded baby! I normally don’t really love taking pictures of animals at the zoo when I’m with children, but I thought that Jay would like to see pictures of the animals.

And now on to SWINGS! We did lots of swinging at the park next door:

Love that face…

…and that one (Rose had to try all of the swings out).

Laurs and Emma inspired me to chop off Rose’s mullet. So now she’s got a little bob. I’m SO glad that scraggly growth is gone from her neck.

We had such a pleasant time together. I still can’t quite believe that we are both moms now.

In 8 years (holy cow—it’s been 8 years?), we went from this:

to this:

to this:

Hurrah for best friends! (and future best friends!)

Traveling

Whew, Rose and I got home from our 2 week midwest excursion on Friday evening. We’re still pooped from it! I feel like there are so many things to catch up on now that we’re home. I have blogs to read, blog posts to write, emails to send, groceries to buy, and a house to continue organizing. I would love to do a nice fat post about all the wonders and joys of our girl-trip, but my brain feels all fuzzy and out of focus, and I want to do the visits justice. So it will have to be a trilogy instead of an all-in-one. Since the traveling part is freshest in my brain, I’ll start there.

On Thursday, June 14th, Rose and I drove the almost-3 hours to Bellevue, WA to my parents’ house, where we hung out with my Mom for a few hours before she took us to the airport. When we were getting out of our car, a doe and a very new-looking fawn trotted right past us up the street! They looked so funny next to all the landscaped gardens and houses.

Our flight was running late so the plane got permission to fly at a lower altitude than usual to make up time. This put us right up next to Mt. Rainier. Talk about breathtaking views! We can see this mountain all the way across Washington in our town 3 hours away. It is MUCH MUCH bigger up close.

We were sitting right in the middle of the Zimbabwe rugby team, which was on its way to the national rugby tournament in Utah. They had been traveling for more than 30 hours straight by the time we met. Rose and I sat next to the team physician who lived 4 hours from the African bush. He said his favorite thing to do is drive out into the wilderness and watch the lions and elephants. He called Rose sweetheart in his awesome accent and drew crayon pictures of African creatures for her in her notebook. I’ve never sat next to such an interesting person on a plane before.

This majestic vista made me want to become a mountain climber.

We had to power-walk through the Salt Lake City airport to make it to our connecting flight. I arrived at the gate all red and sort of sweaty to find that that airplane had been delayed by weather so we got some expensive juice from the only nearby food vendor and eventually got on the little plane to Omaha, Nebraska.

I was astounded to be seated next to yet another wonderful flight-mate. After a lifetime of rarely saying more than hi and bye to fellow plane passengers, I had a pleasant 2 hour chat with a nice lady while Rose snoozed on my lap. About 30 minutes from Omaha, however, we ran into a thunderstorm. Lightning lit up the thick clouds all around us, and that little plane started to jerk and bounce and destroy the equilibrium of my inner ears. I’ve never been airsick before, but I had to ask my new friend if I could have her barf bag, just in case (mine was missing). She kindly handed it over and I clutched it and prayed NOT to puke. I can’t imagine anything worse than being trapped in an airplane with a puking person except being the puker. Puking is not something I ever want to do in public. Thankfully, I managed to keep it together. A lonnnnnnng half hour and a gallon of cold sweat later, we jolted onto the runway. WHEW.

Then I found my dear ole roomie Laurs and we drove home in the rain together. We spent a pleasant week with her family and then drove 3.5 hours to Kansas City to meet up with my sister Em. After major difficulty, we found her at a Chick-Fil-A and had lunch. We switched my luggage to Em’s car and she drove us the remaining 3.5 hours to her house in Washington, MO.

It was so good to be back in beautiful, green, rolling Missouri with my wonderful sister and her familia.

The trip home was shorter but harder in lots of ways. We had a direct flight home from St. Louis to Seattle. 4 hours. Piece of cake, right? Rose was exhausted from 2 weeks of travel, and about an hour into the flight, she broke down into irrational, inconsolable, shrieking wails. She wouldn’t even let me hold her. She thrashed and slithered out of my grasp onto the floor at my feet, where she cried and screamed for a solid 20 or 30 minutes before falling asleep at last on the floor. Then she woke up and wailed for 10-ish minutes every time we hit some rough air or when the pilot made an announcement. The kid next to us put in earplugs. The lady across the isle had on headphones. But I’m pretty sure that we were not very popular on that plane. With about 45 minutes left, Rose woke up and actually wanted to be held, so she calmly snoozed in my lap till we landed. Allow me to insert another WHEW.

My Mom picked us up from the airport at 6pm and we stayed the night at her house. I wanted to just push through and drive home right then, but I had an errand to run on Friday: Ikea! My sister Mel traipsed through that enormous superstore with Rose and I, and helped push the big cart holding the boxes of merchandise. It was weird to go to Ikea and actually BUY some things. After lunch, Rose and I finally hit the road and got home at 5pm on Friday, June 29th. 15 days was a long time to be away from Jeff and Jay! It’s good to be home.

Hmmm, this post turned out to be pretty fat after all. The next 2 parts of this story will be fat with pictures instead of boring airplane stories, I promise.