Vacation Memories

We are back from vacation and I am already lamenting lazy days on the lake and house hunting. I will do my best to recap everything encountered along the way. I have pictures, but as usual, I didn't bring my camera to load them at work. Hopefully I will get that done tomorrow.

We left Wednesday night the 12th for a hotel near LAX. We get there around 9:30 p.m. and we are all ready for bed only to find out upon arrival to our room, they gave us a one bed room rather than a two bed room. I go downstairs to request a change to what our reservation was for. They attempt to give me another room only to land us in an identical room, and there are no other rooms available. It seems that during their remodel (in progress while we were there) they had changed some rooms and didn't upgrade the computer system with the correct bed arrangement. I demanded they give me a discount and push a roll-a-way bed into our room and one of the kids could sleep on the floor. Andrew was all up for sleeping on the floor so it worked out just fine. We caught our shuttle for the airport and landed in St. Louis without a hitch.

We got our rental car and got to hubby's sister's without incidence. It was a beautiful day in the mid 80's. We got settled in and had a great time visiting with family and the like. Kids went swimming at the neighborhood pool and I helped get last minute needs for the wedding accomplished. The following day, I left early for my house hunting expedition, while hubby and kids remained behind to catch a ride to Columbia with other family members. It was kind of strange being without the family. I don't know why, but I always feel a little guilty every time I leave them behind for my own fun time. We looked at 8 houses the first day. Most of them did not have acreage. I was looking more at housed directly in Columbia rather than in the outskirts where the acreage usually is. All the houses I looked at were pretty nice, and I am sure I could be happy in any of them. Of the first day, the one I liked the most was probably a home on the periphery of Columbia in the "The Lake of the Woods" subdivision. This was a 2800+ square foot house owned by a single man who was a chef and was never home. It was four bedroom, with a 5th large room that was completely finished but didn't have windows or a closet. It would make a great playroom for the kids. I couldn't take additional pictures of the house because it was occupied. It was a large house with lots more unfinished space in the basement. It was an unusual house for a single man I think. The furniture in the living room must have been from his grandma because it was all floral with Victorian style end tables. It wasn't in colors a man would pick. I am sure of it. Everywhere else was sparsely decorated with normal looking bachelor type of stuff. There were books on cooking everywhere. He was a professional cook. He had THREE deep freezers and tons of catering equipment in his storage areas. Also on the plus side, since he was a chef he had a gas range! That is hard to find in this neck of the woods. The drier was gas as well. I liked this house a lot. Lots of room, not too expensive, and in a very nice area.

The next house I liked a lot was also not on acreage. It was in a town called Ashland. It is about 11 miles out of Columbia. Which could be okay, but we wanted Columbia because it has so much to offer for kids. This was a brand new home and was very lovely. The hard wood floors were gorgeous. There were large trees in the backyard. The kitchen was very nice, had a formal dining area as well as a breakfast nook. The master bath was absolutely awesome! It had a large jacuzzi tub, and a huge tiled shower with two shower heads! I loved that feature! The only downfall was that the window over the bathtub was facing the main street! I thought that was crazy, but I guess that is why they make blinds. There was a fair amount of unfinished basement in this house as well. This house was more expensive than the house owned by the chef.

There were several other homes I also liked. One house we looked at on Melissa Drive was nice. the owner even called the realtor later in the day to see if I was interested. He was very desperate in a divorce situation and needed to sell his house. Ready to make a deal from what I could tell. It was a nice house but the area didn't thrill me too much. It was a nice neighborhood but it was a newer development and it looked as such. Not much in the way of large trees and the like. In the photos on line it looks like there are trees, but they are behind the house a bit, and those are about the only large trees in the "hood". It did have a very nice covered deck though, and the down stairs was perfect for a second living area for my dad. They had their grandmother down there. I suppose we could get a really nice deal on it though.

Later Friday we got into our hotel room and took a little tour of the area. Kids swam in the pool at the hotel, which was indoors. For a California girl, that was a little strange, and very echoey. They had a blast though. This hotel had continental breakfast. It was the fanciest continental breakfast I had ever had. It had fresh waffles which you cooked yourself on their waffle iron, biscuits and gravey, all kinds of juices, bagels, toast, usual cold and hot cereals etc. Saturday was a bit of a mellow day. We got off to a late start because the kids slept in late. We eventually got out and took a tour of the city of Columbia. It was very nice, and it was quite hot that day, but not unbearable. I took Mark to a house on acreage I had seen the day before. We both liked it, but it was off dirt roads, and further outside Columbia. We finally agreed that it was too much money for the location. It had a nice pond, but the house was older and there several things that needed to be done.

We finally got ready for the wedding and headed out for that. It was a very nice wedding in a Baptist church which had a building style you don't find here in California. It was beautiful. The pink dress was worn by me. It looked good...pics of that too coming. I received many compliments on the dress. Thanks for the tips on getting the pink rather than the black. Upon exiting the church (while waiting for the couple to emerge) a woman dressed like a hooker exited the church. She had on a skin tight black stretchy lace dress with nude underlay on. Seriously, she looked like she was wearing lingerie. My brother-in-law and I in unison said, "oh my!" under our breath. After the wedding, we were requested by hubby's dad to go back to the hotel to get his dad's comfy shoes. The shoes from the tux rental company were killing his feet. Well, hubby missed the correct exit and we got stuck in a traffic jam because they freeway was shut down with all kinds of emergency vehicles. Eventually, we got turned around and to the reception hall, only to find out they didn't have a table for us. No one could bother to save us a table. It was apparent that many people showed up who didn't RSVP, which we did. Anyway, after about 15 minutes hubby's brother goes rooting the place and digs up a table for us and we get to sit down. We were about ready to leave. We get our food, but it was buffet style and it was slim pickings. The reception itself was very fun though. The kids had a ball playing with the other kids and having free roam of the entire place. Roo would often go outside and talk with the smokers telling them they needed to quit and so forth. I found him out there one time talking with none other than the hooker, only to find out her name was Erica, and Roo was busy flirting with her as well as telling her he was a spy and that she should stop smoking. Apparently Roo liked Erica a lot. Later on in the evening when the dancing started he had several dances with Erica as well as a lot of other people. The kids absolutely danced their shoes off. Lyd was involved in a very deep game of Stratego which some other kids had brought. She had never played it before, but took hold of the situation and began calling all the shots and shouting "ATTACK!" It was pretty comical..only because she LOVES being in charge. I asked Roo what his favorite part of the wedding was, and upon turning red, he instantly told me, "dancing with Erica". Lyd's favorite part was the wedding itself.

Sunday was a day spent with families and exploring the area a little more. We took the kids to the largest indoor play place in the country. It was located at a Burger King. The indoor place was three stories tall! They had a great time in there. It was followed by swimming later on. Monday was another day of house hunting for me. My sister in law came with me this time. Hubby didn't go on any of these adventures of house hunting because he was watching the kids. He figured he would look at the houses I liked rather than sift through ones we didn't like at all. Probably very smart of him. Well, we could only look at a few houses this day because we couldn't get into one because the family was on vacation, and they didn't want their house shown while they were gone, and one other was sold during the weekend. I took this time to take a second look at a couple of the houses from the previous viewing adventure. I still liked the Chef's house a lot.

We left Monday and went back to St. Louis to spend the night at Hubby's sister's house again. It was more relaxed this time because the wedding was over now and life was returning to normal for the family. We ordered pizza, watched movies, took a walk in their "hood", and overall just had a good time.

Tuesday came and we headed for Minneapolis, Minnesota. We get through check-in and I notice Hubby is taken aside to have his garment inspected. Well, upon inspection the TSA agent finds two pocket knives in the bag. I had no clue. Hubby acts all innocent. He had three choices. He could either surrender the knives, take them back up stairs and mail them to himself, or go to baggage and get a box and check them in as luggage. Well, we were a little pressed for time and didn't have our seat assignments yet. He was frustrated but opted to surrender the knives. He said they were only $40.00 and he could replace them easy enough. So, we proceed to our gate only to find our flight has been delayed and he had plenty of time to manage his knives. He later tells me that when he went into the screening area he emptied his pockets and had forgotten all about his knives. He stuffed them into his garment backing thinking they may miss them. I said to him, "right, like were going to miss two knives on an x-ray machine when everything else in the bag was just your suit!". We laughed. We finally got onto our plane 1.5 hours later than we were supposed to, and there were several calls for people to surrender their seats for a later flight plus a $300.00 voucher for each seat. I really wanted to jump on that deal, but with the kids it would have been too long a day for them, and subsequently for us. We got into Chicago very close to our scheduled departure time for our connection. Thankfully our connection was only two gates down from where we deplaned. It was last call, and they had already taken us off the flight, but hadn't given our seats away (yet). We get the last four seats and had to do some trading so we could all be sitting together.

It was now time to hurry up and wait. Instead of being able to take off, we had to wait for the electrical crew to check the safety light on the engine test wind up. It was supposed to come on, but it didn't even the the engine spun up to speed just fine. That took 40 minutes. It was located and fixed and all was good. We taxi to the runway, only to be delayed another 40 minutes because another aircraft felt something strange with their tires on take off. So, they had to check the entire runway for tire debris or anything that could cause a puncture to a tire. We waited another 30 minutes until they directed us to another runway to get us underway. The flight from Chicago to Minneapolis was nauseating. the pilot was up and down and what not. The flight attendant was pissed and couldn't figure out what his problem was since there was no turbulence. I figured he had bellied up to the bar. We were glad to land, and all of us were a little green. We got our rental car and drove the 2.5 hours to Duluth. We arrived at my cousins house where we spent the remainder of the trip. She had donated the main part of her two bedroom house to us while she took up residence in her bedroom in the basement. We would have stayed down there, but she insisted we have the main house. Originally she was going to stay at her boyfriends house, but they hadn't been getting along at all, so she stayed at her house. Honestly, she needs to dump that guy. He is a controlling jealous freak. He can't handle it if she isn't sitting on his lap stroking his hair while confirming, "yes your Highness, your dick is beautiful". I swear, the man is a case.

Anyway, time in Duluth was excellent. Much of the days were spent on the lake and visiting relatives. We also took a scenic railroad tour up the shores of Lake Superior and took a tour of the lake as well on a cruise. We had a family BBQ which was excellent with lots of good food and laughs. We left Sunday night only to find out we had another plane delay. Boo Hoo. We finally got into LAX at 1:15 in the morning, took the shuttle to our car and I drove home. We got home about 4:30 in the morning and I slept hard. But still felt like I had a hangover all the next day. I feel fine today though.

I never did get to link up with Mr. Wood to get the pictures of my dad's bio father. Our times just didn't gibe. So, he will mail the pictures to me. I am still really excited to get the pictures.

I hope I remember my camera tomorrow to get pics up.