Trip Re-Cap

Well, finally here's a brief recap from our travel weekend.  Thankfully, we were both well enough to fly.  It sure was iffy the days leading up to the trip.  I was so worried about my ears being plugged and painful, and while they were still a little plugged, they weren't painful- PTL!  My husband caught my cold, however, before the trip, and had to deal with majorly plugged ears.  Poor guy.  He can't catch any breaks this pregnancy.

We got in on a Thursday night, my dad picked us up, and we headed to my Grandma's new place where we would be spending the weekend.  We were able to stay in a guest suite right next door to her apartment, which was a perfect location for all of our events of the weekend.  Plus, we enjoyed the extra time with her.  Breakfast every morning was down in her cafeteria with the 55+ crowd.

The rest of the days and evenings were filled with family time.  The most exciting part was meeting our new niece for the first time.  This is my little brother's 1st baby and the 1st grandchild on my side of the family.  You may remember all of my jealous emotions when his wife announced their pregnancy to me last year.  Sad to say, I probably would have still had a hard time with the baby if it weren't for our own growing baby inside.  But amazingly, I wasn't jealous and didn't even think about that while we were there.

DH did a lot of this:

We started calling him the "baby whisperer" because he was so good at calming down little G.  I seriously can't wait until he puts those skills to use on our baby.  What a blessing that will be!

Friday we went over to Grandma and Grandpa's house to look at some of the things Grandma wanted me/us to have.  It was really strange seeing the house so empty and free of their things.  It hardly looked like my grandparent's house that I remember.  The last time I visited MN I stayed with her at her house in October, so my family has really done a lot of work since then to get the house ready to sell. (Grandma only moved out of her house late October.)

I have many, many things of Grandma's, but nothing of Grandpa's, so DH and I went to the basement to see what we could find.  My Grandpa was an avid fisherman and hunter, so he had lots of duck pictures on the wall.  It was also his work area with all his tools, etc.  We found a picture we liked that we thought would look nice displayed in our house, so Grandma said we could have it.  After we took it off the wall and inspected it closer, we noticed the artist had signed his name below a fish with ichthus written in Greek inside it.  What a cool reminder of Grandpa and our shared faith with him (a lot of my family is unchurched).

Then we had lunch with my dad, Grandma, and Aunt, which was fun and relaxing.  We took naps because DH and I were both tired and still a little weary from our colds, then we headed to my parents house to celebrate my little brother's birthday.  It was fun to be in town for a birthday celebration.

Saturday morning we had a little crisis at Grandma's.  Before we met her to go down for breakfast, she'd been cleaning around her apartment and dumped her trash and recycling.  She couldn't find her keys any where, so she thought she dumped them down the chute.  We helped her search and then we tried to talk with the management to get an extra set of keys.  They didn't have an extra set and she was hysterical because we had so many plans that weekend where we would need to lock her room, but also get in to help prepare for 2 parties to be held at her place.  I suggested we go down to the dumpsters and DH saved the day by dumpster diving for her keys!  He first climbed up in the recycling one, and of course the keys weren't there.  Then he climbed into the huge garbage one and there they were!  Phew.  Major disaster adverted.  DH maintains hero status in Grandma's eyes:-)

Then we helped dad book a plane ticket to come visit us next month and help prepare the nursery.  More on that later, but dad is not a big fan of flying (he's been on a plane 3 times in his life) and this will be his first solo plane ride!!  So excited.  We helped set up for the baptism party and then went to the church for the baptism.  This was a huge answer to prayer because little brother and SIL haven't been to a church since their wedding 2 1/2 years ago.  The fact that they wanted to get their child baptized and found a place to worship on their own is amazing!  They are going as a family regularly and are excited to get more involved.

Here's the little family after the baptism.  Welcome to God's family, G!

Here's our niece.  Seriously, I could eat this girl up she is so stinking cute.  She's 11 or 12 weeks in this picture and an absolute doll.  Every time I talked to her or played with her she would smile at me.  I could eat her up.  If our child is half this cute, I will have no problem staring at him/her all day long.

Sunday afternoon was our baby shower.  I don't have any pictures yet since I left that up to one of my aunts.  My other aunt did such a great job planning a couples shower since it's not often that both DH and I are in town.  The guys were good sports as it was the first baby shower for most of them.  It was so fun to see family that I haven't seen for awhile, and my aunt also let me invite a few friends from high school and college that I still keep in touch with.  She had everyone bring their favorite children's book for Baby as part of their gift.  This was perfect since DH and I are such book lovers.  It was so fun to see the books people brought and we had fun reading all of them once we returned home!  It was so fun to be able to celebrate this Baby with dear friends and family.  Something I never thought we'd be able to do.

After the shower, we had a bit more family time before everyone took off.  We stayed and talked with Dad and Grandma for awhile about mom.  Dad has tried to get her to go to marriage counseling with him, but she only has one hour free during the week (that's what she told him) and I think he's pretty much given up on trying to repair the marriage. 

I didn't mention mom much in my re-cap, but she was out of control the weekend we were home.  I'm sure she was excited to see us, but every time she opened her mouth it was to talk about herself, blame someone for something, give unsolicited advice, or put someone down.  She even managed to blame dad for his father's death because she claims she knew Grandpa was sick long before he went to the doctor and she told dad about it.  Whatever.  She had Grandma in tears over that and that was just one example from among many where she just doesn't know how to appropriately talk with people without puffing herself up.  I've long said she has a mental illness that needs serious treatment before there's any hope or chance of a semi-normal relationship with her.  On this trip, DH made the comment that he thought she was demon-possessed!  I've never heard him say that about anyone, but he usually can be pretty good at discerning people, so I don't discredit his comment, I'm just not sure what to do with it.  We have some serious boundary-setting to do before Baby gets old enough to talk with her.

Monday morning we were homeward bound.  Thankfully, everything fit into our carry-on luggage (people were very considerate of our travel needs by giving gift cards) and we made it home without a problem.  I'm so thankful for the time we had with my family, and I'm not sure when we'll be traveling to see them again.  We had lots of I'm thinking I'd like for Grandma to meet Baby in the fall if we're up for traveling then, but it's way too early to tell.