MY FIRST FLOAT TRIP!!!

My brother and fantastic new sister-in-law invited Pat and I to go on a family float trip. I will admit, at first I was a little hesitant. I didn't want to leave Kimber ALL day, and originally the invited us to spend the night. After much deliberation I decided this was an opportunity I couldn't pass up, but I also couldn't be away from my kiddo for a long amount of time so we agreed to come down to float and then head home after the trip was over.

In my raft was my brother, sister-in-law, brother's dad, me and the hubs, oh and like 4 coolers :) I seriously had a blast, and even though this is going to make me sound like a super dork, I really liked being able to spend an entire day with my big bro. I mean, we hardly ever see each other so this was especially nice to kinda have some one on one time... mostly with us giving each other a hard time!

As the float trip came to an end, my sister-in-law's dad found out we weren't spending the night and started throwing phrases around like 'slashing tires' so we promised we'd spend the night next year. He started asking me about my kiddo and I proceeded to tell him her name is Kimber and the conversation went something like this:

Dan: So what's your daughter's name?
Me: Kimber.
Dan: What?!?!?!? Kimberly???
Me: Yep, Kimberly... without the 'ly'.
Dan: (confused look on his face) Why the hell would you give your daughter half a name??? I guess I should go around introducing myself as 'Duh', 'Hi, my name is Duh'.

Mass quantities of alcohol may or may not of been consumed prior to the above mentioned conversation :)

Last Week's Vacation

Well our sitter took off last week to go to Florida so Pat and I decided to take off work and just relax for a week with little miss. Saturday Pat's brother was in town from TX (woohoo!!!) so we met for lunch before he had to go to a wedding and then did a birthday lunch (for Pat) on Sunday followed by a trip to Cabelas (my favorite place on Earth.... NOT!)

At Cabela's... my worst nightmare... my kid in camo!

My fantastic father-in-law has decided that Kimber deserves a present for every occasion. When Jon graduated, she got a swing. On Father's Day, she got a pool. And at Pat's birthday lunch she got a xylophone:

Monday we took her to the Magic House. It was wayyy too hot to do anything outside so that limited our choices, but it seems that Kimber liked the Magic House, so we did good:

On our way home we stopped by the mall so she could go to Build-A-Bear. We weren't too sure how well this would go over but as soon as we walked in she saw this brown puppy and just HAD to have it! We even walked up and down the wall to see if she changed her mind but she clung to the puppy.

Of course she had to register her puppy... Whose name is... Puppy :)

Then we rented one of these things:

And proceeded to walk around the mall.

Tuesday through Thursday we worked on the house: painting, organizing the kitchen, cleaning out the basement, and donating a bunch of stuff to Goodwill.

Friday we took her to the carousel at Faust Park. You know it's only $1 to ride? That's a bargain price for quality family entertainment!

Saturday, since he lost a bet, Pat took me to dinner at Maggiano's. Words cannot express how yummy the food was and we are already in the process of setting up a date with friends of ours so we can try the family style dinner! On to the bet he lost because that's way more interesting than what I had for dinner... Sunday night Kimber woke up screaming and when Pat went in to get her she was pulling on her ear. We brought her in bed with us and she kept waking up screaming. Pat was sure that she had an ear infection, so we took her to the doctor. Our bet was if she HAD an ear infection I had to take Pat on a date, but if I was right and she didn't have one he had to take me on a date. He even made a comment before we took her to the doctor that if he's right he does have some Daddy's intuition.... Well honey.... Not so much :) It's ok, I still love ya! Thanks for the date!

So that pretty much sums up our week off work! I cannot wait to blog about what we've got coming up this weekend!

Weekend Trip

Last weekend we all of a sudden decided to take a trip to see Jon and Rae. We went twice before to try to see Jon play baseball but the first weekend was a scrimmage and the second weekend the games got rained out. I knew it was important to Pat to see his brother play so we decided to make one more trip before graduation.

Friday I was off work and had my 4 hour dentist appointment, so when I got home I packed up the car and waited for Pat to get home. Kimber was pretty good until about KC so I got in the back and got her out to play, but then we hit traffic so I put her back in her car seat and she cried the rest of the way there. I felt bad, but what are you supposed to do?

We finally got in around 6 pm and fed Kimber and it took me a hour to put her to bed. She was not having any part of her pack n play so she slept with us. Jon and Rae came to the hotel for dinner and Kimber woke up, we played for a couple hours and then it was 30 minutes of screaming before we finally got Kimber to go to sleep again!

Saturday we met Rae for lunch at this pizza place that serves the BEST buffalo chicken pizza I've ever had! I will very much miss getting pizza from this place, it's that delish! After lunch we went to watch some baseball.

Pat and I debated leaving for a while because Kimber wouldn't nap but she was getting fussy. I said we should just stay until the end and I'm glad we did because Jon hit a GRAND SLAM!!! Such a stud :)

That night Rae and I had some alone time and shared stories about our cookie cutter childhood (insert sarcasm), and I must say, it's strange how people can have more in common than they'd ever realize. After Jon got done with his school thing we all went to Applebee's and got some sangria... yum! Well Jon got a long island, but whatev... 

Sunday we met the family for breakfast and had to say good bye, which is never fun. Jon gave Kimber a game ball which I thought was SUPER cute! Now I just need to go find a baseball case!

Mini Vaca

This past weekend we went to see a couple of my favorite people, Jon and Rae. We were supposed to be going to watch Jon play baseball, however, the games were cancelled, and I must say I was not upset by this! We hung out with them all weekend, it was pretty fantastic! I actually got to (finally) spend some time with Rae getting to know her. I've only seen her a handful of times for short visits so it was nice to be able to just talk to her.

We got to Ottawa, KS Friday around 5, checked into our hotel room and they came over. We fed Kimber and then took her swimming in the hotel pool! I was super excited to see her reaction since she LOVES bath time, but this was obviously less than thrilling for her.

We decided to call it quits with the pool and headed back to the room to get dinner and put Miss to bed. She wanted no part in that and she stayed up two hours past her bedtime to play with Jon and Rae. She has been on this weird 'I'm afraid of strangers' kick lately so I was super relieved that she was excited to see them!

Saturday we went to town and bought a crap ton of baby clothes at Babies R Us. We got $180 worth of clothes (and a humidifier) for $100. Not bad, huh? They took us to this BBQ place, and even though I'm not the biggest BBQ fan I will admit it was pretty good. We then decided that we would give green beans to Kimber, as her facial expressions to new things are priceless, so we headed to Walmart, grabbed some green beans and went back to the hotel.

Please note the ridiculous amount of green beans on her pants... oh and face! And then it was time to swim again. Pat got her pool balls and she seemed to enjoy her new toy.

After a long couple hours trying to put her to bed we gave up, Jon and Rae left, and we all went to sleep in our nice king size bed. We no sooner fell asleep and we hear 'click click' 'click click' so Pat get's up and some old man is trying to get in our room with his room key. Now the old man is knocking while trying to get his card to work so Pat bangs on the door and tells him the room is occupied. It took a few bangs for the old man to realize he was not at his room but finally said sorry and wandered off.

Sunday morning we woke up to a note from the old man apologizing for the night before! We packed up, checked out and met Jon and Rae for lunch before heading back to St. Louis. Not going to lie, I was not looking forward to leaving. Hopefully they come home for Easter like Jon said, guess Rae and I will need to start another countdown till we see each other again :)