It's funny how you can go several weeks with very little excitement, and then all of the sudden you have a million things going on. Since we returned from the cruise, I feel like we have been going non-stop. Now that our washing machine is fixed, I also feel like we are doing laundry non-stop.
The 14th of October was Granny's birthday. The entire family spent the weekend at the MCM Elegante together. For those of you not familiar with my mom's family, here are the basics. My mom is one of four girls. I am one of ten grandkids. Ethan is one of seventeen great grandchildren. By the time you add spouses into the mix, it brings our total to well over forty people. I know that's not the largest family in the world, but with seventeen kids running around it was plenty. Granny bought all of the little ones matching Halloween pajamas with their names on them. Ethan has already worn his a couple of times since then. Granny also made each of the ten grandchildren a quilt. These are serious birthday favors. It seems that Granny did most of the gift giving on her birthday, but we did get her something in return. The grandkids pitched in to buy Granny her own iPad--just what every hip 84 year old needs. You can laugh now, but she seemed to be enjoying it quite a bit before we ever left the hotel. She has already figured out how to read her email, check Facebook, and play Words With Friends. Do you really need it to do anything else? It was a fun weekend all around, and it is always good to see the family. I regret that I actually got very few pictures of the whole thing. Hopefully someone got some good ones. We did have a professional take pictures of the group, as well as some of the individual families. I will post those if and when I am able to get my hands on them.
This past weekend, we decided to make a quick trip to the State Fair. If I were to write a book about things you shouldn't do with a two year old who hasn't had a nap, this would probably fill a whole chapter. I'm not going to say I didn't have fun, but it sure seemed like a lot more work than usual. Fortunately, the weather was agreeable. It took us about fifteen minutes to find something fried to eat. We started with Fried Buffalo Chicken in a Flapjack and some Deep Fried Queso. Both of these things were excellent, and probably our favorites from the trip. I attempted to try fried Frito Pie, only to be told that they were out. Really? Buy some more Fritos. We aren't in the middle of nowhere. Let me run across the street and just get some for you. Then you can fry them. Everyone's happy. I'm just sayin'. That seems like a poor way to run your junk food stand. Over the course of the afternoon, we also ate fried biscuits and gravy, fried pepperoni pizza, fried pineapple upside down cake, and fried Autumn pumpkin pie. I didn't care for the pizza, but everything else was pretty good. We also got a barbecue wrap with some fries, and I had a bratwurst for a late night snack. They seriously ought to hand out Nexium and Lipitor when you walk through the gate.
We did manage to do a few things that didn't involve food. We endured the Amazing Dobermans, which weren't that amazing. We wandered through all of the craft booths with people selling all kinds of things that so far I have managed to live without. We did get Ethan a wooden puzzle of his name. We walked through the Auto Show, which is always one of my favorite parts. Once it was dark, we watched the parade. Ethan really enjoyed it, and probably would have even more had some jackass with a camera not come and stood right in front of him. Dude, you are too old for parades. Move over and let the little kids have their fun. We capped off the evening with a concert on the main stage by The Bangles. Susanna Hoffs is 52 years old, but she still looks and sounds as good as she did when I was 9. They played all of the songs that everyone knows, as well as a few that nobody seemed to know. I thought they were pretty good, and if Ethan hadn't slept through most of it, he would have liked it as well. He was awake for the encore of Walk Like an Egyptian. I made the mistake of calling this his first concert. Tiffany corrected me and said that when he was just a few weeks old we saw local band The Penny Jar. Now that I think about it, he has seen them at least twice. My bad.
Bonus Trivia: The Bangles' hit Manic Monday was actually written by Prince under the pseudonym Christopher.
A couple of weeks ago, I posted our vacation pictures on Facebook. My Aunt Vicki was quick to point out that I didn't include a picture of my feet. She couldn't believe that I didn't take one, and she was right. I took one. I don't know why I have all of these feet pictures, but for some reason I find them interesting. I was saving this particular picture for this blog, which I intended to post about a day or two after the pictures. Now that some time has passed, I will probably have to give you the short version. It goes like this.
The last week of September, we took a cruise. Specifically, we took a Southern Carribean cruise on the Serenade of the Seas. In addition to myself, Tiffany, and Ethan, were my sister, her husband, and their baby, and my grandmother and her best friend Patsy. We all flew to San Juan, Puerto Rico and spent the night before getting on the big ship the next day. I would have liked to have spent a little more time there, but I guess we will have to do that another time. Fun fact: We took a cruise in 2008 that was supposed to stop in San Juan, but we didn't make that particular port of call due to a hurricane. Including my planned trip to New Orleans in 2005, that brings the total number of times hurricanes have screwed up my vacation to two. This was our fourth time on a cruise ship, and also the fourth time with Royal Carribean. It was the first time that we had to take a two year old with us. This presents a whole new set of experiences. The ship itself was gorgeous. It wasn't the biggest ship we have been on, nor was it the smallest. They layout was great, and getting around the ship required minimal effort. The staff was extremely tolerant of the children. While many people thought Ethan was cute, his cousin Murray practically had a fan club. I thought eating in the dining room was going to be a disaster, but overall Ethan did extremely well. He got to test out his tastebuds on things like lobster, prime rib, and leg of lamb. Kids menus are for girls. He ate extremely well the entire trip. If memory serves, the itinerary was something like this: sea day, Barbados, St. Lucia, Antigua, St. Maarten, St. Croix USVI. As we were somewhat limited on what we could do with the kids, we spent a lot of time at the beach. Although I don't generally consider myself a beach person, we did have a pretty good time. Ethan loved being in the water. We took the kids to the zoo while we were in St. Maarten. I think they used the term zoo a little freely. It was a few chain link fences with some Carribean wildlife. It was kind of fun though, and it was a nice break from the beach. We also got to eat some pretty interesting island food in a few places, including something called fish wings. I just did a quick google search on fish wings and came up with nothing, but I swear I didn't make it up. They were delicious. I know it has something to do with a fish that is native to that island. I also bought a bottle of banana ketchup, which I intend to try soon. I'll let you know. At the end of the week, we were all exhausted. It was a fun time, but it is always good to be home for a few days. Tiffany was home for about 12 hours before she had to get up and get ready for work again. I took two extra days off just for good measure. I will also note that we had a ton of laundry after this trip, and after two loads the washing machine stopped working. We had to order a new pump, so we lived around our piles of laundry for about a week. We are now having trouble with the ice maker, and the fan in the wine fridge. Apparently appliances are only made to last three and a half years. Thanks to the washing machine incident, I now know a good appliance guy. This past weekend was Granny's birthday. I will discuss that in a future blog (probably).
The 14th of October was Granny's birthday. The entire family spent the weekend at the MCM Elegante together. For those of you not familiar with my mom's family, here are the basics. My mom is one of four girls. I am one of ten grandkids. Ethan is one of seventeen great grandchildren. By the time you add spouses into the mix, it brings our total to well over forty people. I know that's not the largest family in the world, but with seventeen kids running around it was plenty. Granny bought all of the little ones matching Halloween pajamas with their names on them. Ethan has already worn his a couple of times since then. Granny also made each of the ten grandchildren a quilt. These are serious birthday favors. It seems that Granny did most of the gift giving on her birthday, but we did get her something in return. The grandkids pitched in to buy Granny her own iPad--just what every hip 84 year old needs. You can laugh now, but she seemed to be enjoying it quite a bit before we ever left the hotel. She has already figured out how to read her email, check Facebook, and play Words With Friends. Do you really need it to do anything else? It was a fun weekend all around, and it is always good to see the family. I regret that I actually got very few pictures of the whole thing. Hopefully someone got some good ones. We did have a professional take pictures of the group, as well as some of the individual families. I will post those if and when I am able to get my hands on them.
