Home, Safe & Sound

We had a great time with Grandpa Georgia over the past few days. I thought about taking work to do while we were there, but then I purposefully decided to leave it at home and just enjoy our nice mini-vacation. You'll all be impressed that we fit everything we needed for our family of three in one small suitcase and the diaper bag. Although, we forgot our digital camera in the Volvo. Whoops!

We arrived Thursday afternoon around suppertime and headed for Dad's house to drop off our luggage before heading to eat at the Golden Corral. This is the only buffet I've ever been to where you have to take your plate up with you. Well, Dad said he'd stay with Joshua while I went to get the Bean some food. I completely forgot the plate that I knew we had just been given when he paid. I giggled as I came back, joking that I must be from the North. Then, Dad said to go get myself something and he'd continue to stay with Joshua and visit. Since it had been a hectic day and we hadn't really eaten much for lunch, I decided to take him up on the offer. Shawn & I went up to get our dinners, and completely forgot our plates again. We all laughed. Then Dad left...plateless. He came back for the plate and we cracked up. Then, when I decided to get dessert...you got it, no plate. What in the world? I think our brains were fried from traveling...or we're just not that sharp.

I cut a bunch of veggies, bread & that type food into small pieces for the Bean, and Grandpa Georgia was enjoying helping me put a few pieces at a time in front of Joshua (otherwise, he puts everything into his mouth at once or throws it on the floor). When I got up the second time, Dad was feeding him and made a goofy coughing/laughing noise, which Joshua mimicked the whole weekend and we would all giggle. He would point to Grandpa and go "hah huh huh huh"... so funny and so cute! We saw one of Dad's co-workers that night, too, at the restaurant.

We arrived back at Dad's safe & sound, and Joshua was thrilled with his toys and the big barrel of bright orange cheese balls Dad had bought that he could roll around and crawl up onto. We set up Dad's pack 'n play in one of the three spare bedrooms and put our stuff in the other. Shawn & I are always amused at how many people Dad's house could sleep - one room with a King bed, one room with a queen bed, one room with a double bed, and one room with a single day bed with trundle that pulls out and a toddler bed and a pack 'n play. Not to mention his couches, etc. and the semi-finished basement he doesn't use for anything but storage. He also keeps enough food in his house that everyone sleeping could eat for a year and not go hungry. He has his pantry & cupboards stocked, along with a huge chest freezer and other shelving. It's amazing!

Since Grandpa Georgia is an investor in real estate, he's been given a key to every HUD property in the area. We went looking at various houses and were impressed by the affordability of housing in that area compared to what people pay in rent. We didn't look at anything over $200k, and yet we saw one house that was a 5 bedroom, 3.5 bath with an extra office, beautiful moldings, family room with fireplace, eat-in-kitchen & formal dining room, huge fenced in lot at the end of a cul-de-sac in a swim/tennis community. We saw another house - 4 huge BR, 2.5 BA - that had not one but two master bedroom closets larger than our nursery, complete with built-ins, the biggest whirlpool tub I've ever seen with a mirror above it and then a beautiful window above that where you can see out but no one can see in, a gorgeous sun porch, enormous deck with built-in-hot tub, fenced in yard, cozy family room with fireplace, huge eat-in-kitchen with bay window fancy formal dining room, and many other amenities, an all brick house with 3-car garage, another house with marble floors, granite countertops & gorgeous fixtures, and the list goes on. Shawn & I had a blast. Even though Georgia is hot, there isn't a home built without a fireplace, at least a two-car garage, and master bathroom. The layouts may vary, but those features seem to come standard and the price was so low! Yet, so many people rent instead of buying, paying more than a mortgage would cost. It seems crazy to us.

Friday night we ate at our favorite restaurant in the area, Folks, and on Saturday Annette came over and we had a cookout. Joshua slept well, ate well and was pretty good the entire trip. On Saturday, he got tired of riding around in the car so we spent a better part of the day just relaxing at Dad's house, which worked out fine for us. I think he might have had a headache because Shawn & I saw him grab a chunk of the hair on his head and rip it out. It made me really nervous, and I hope to ask the pediatrician about it at his one-year well-baby check-up.

This morning we woke up at 5:30 to get packed and head to the airport. There was an accident on Rt. 85, so we had to take a detour - thankfully Shawn had picked up a newspaper ad that had a tiny not-to-scale map telling us how to get to the airport when all traffic had to exit. We arrived with plenty of time, but the lines to check in were obnoxious. After waiting almost an hour to check our luggage (normally we wouldn't check luggage, but we had to take a carseat with us for the first time), it was our turn to be waited on. The idiot behind the counter said we were within 45 minutes of the flight taking off (which I think his watch was five minutes fast, but whatever) and so they would no longer allow us to be on that flight. I was livid! Had it not been for their slowness in checking people in, we would have been more than fine and still had plenty of time to make it to our terminal, but they made us wait for a later flight, even though the policy that we had printed out online said that the latest time was 30 minutes before the flight took off. After getting through security, we still would have had plenty of time to make it on the earlier flight. Ugh! Everything worked out okay, though, other than us being a little over an hour later than what we were expecting to be home. I fully intend to write a letter to the airline's customer service department.

All in all, it was a great trip. Joshua has been pointing, mimicking sounds and even played so big with me this weekend. He's completely amazing to us. We love him dearly, and we're glad to be home safe and sound.