Picture show
Isn't she lovely? This is my little niece and she turned one last week. This weekend, Brian, Ariel, Racecar and I hopped in our trusty minivan and headed down south to Louisville, Kentucky. It was a fine time filled with lots of good food, good drink, little sleep and birthday cake, oh and poker.
We left on Friday in a mad dash for the door. I was running so far behind, I had my blood work done, I worked out, made a stop and got home at 11:20 am. We were planning to leave for our weekend getaway at 1 pm. We hadn't packed a thing, I needed to shower, fax some forms to make sure our 5K t-shirts arrived on time, feed the kids and our house was a stinkin' mess. (A DISASTER, I TELL YOU!) I showered, packed, fed the kids cheeseburgers in the car and left the house a stinkin' mess (A DISASTER, I TELL YOU!) and we left at 1:23 pm.
We really had such a nice time. The adults stayed up too late and drank too much, luckily all of our kids slept well and slept long which made the lack of sleep bearable. I only took 350 pictures from Friday night to Sunday morning. I love my camera. See, I take important pictures like this:
And yummy pictures like this:
And pictures of Ariel when she is deep in thought:
And handsome Racecar pictures:
and wild party pictures:
The girl on the right reads my blog (don't blush, KW!):
And here's a picture of me in my finest hour (in other words: just a teensy weensy bit tipsy):
So, there you have it. A good weekend with great company.
You can imagine our surprise when we had only been on the road for less than one hour on our way home, and it was ONE HUNDRED DEGREES outside when our air conditioning stopped working and our car began making an awful grinding noise.
I'm not going to go into specifics, because it's long and complicated and just puts me in a really bad mood and I'm bound to use four letter words, but we are home after seven and a half hours (when the trip typically takes four hours), we are five pounds lighter thanks to sweating and our van is now sitting at the shop waiting for some guy to look at it, fix it and then charge us six million dollars just so we don't sweat like pigs any longer.
It will be totally worth it.
Looks like it was an absolutely wonderfuly weekend!
~hope the car doesn't cost 6 mil to fix!
Posted by: Lori - Queen of Dirty Laundry | August 13, 2007 at 01:27 AM
Looks like a top-ten weekend, for sure! Aside from the air-conditioner thing.
Glad you made it home safely!
Posted by: MamaLee | August 13, 2007 at 03:33 AM
Aw, sweetie that pic of Ariel looks *just* like you! And, so glad to see you havin' fun! You've been workin' too hard lately! *wink*
Posted by: Beth/Mom2TwoVikings | August 13, 2007 at 07:21 AM
Great pictures...I love my camera too! It looks like you all had a blast of course minus the whole no ac and sweating like a pig of course. Good luck gettng it fixed!
Mel
Posted by: Mel | August 13, 2007 at 07:34 AM
Your niece is adorable. I can't believe she's 1 already. Sounds like you guys had a great time while down there. How neat to be able to spend a fun weekend with family once in a while. Yours always sound like they get along so well :-)
Sorry to hear about the awful trip back. Doubling the trip time does not sound good. I really hope that it doesn't cost you an arm and a leg to get it fixed, but I know you'll want that air back.
Posted by: Amy F. | August 13, 2007 at 07:49 AM
Wow those pictures are amazing. Your niece the is most beautiful darling little girl (in addition to Ariel, of course!). Were you passed out under a picnic table?
I am so glad you guys had such a great time away from home and hectic schedules, well, minus the van problems. Hope it gets fixed soon and doesn't cost you a fortune.
Posted by: Lynette | August 13, 2007 at 08:16 AM
What a doll!!!
Glad you had a great weekend, right up till the van problem. Atleast you didn't have to push the van home, right? right?!?!
Posted by: Michelle | August 13, 2007 at 11:38 AM
your niece is soooo cute! all of the pictures are great actually. glad you had fun! sorry about the van. but look on the bright side - you lost 5lbs sweating :)
Posted by: J. Fergie | August 13, 2007 at 12:41 PM
Ugh, I can't stand the heat. At all. That just sucks about your car. I'm sorry!
But it looks like you had a great weekend! You have been a traveling fool this summer! Go you!
Posted by: Thea | August 13, 2007 at 01:54 PM
Wha? It seems like yesterday when your niece was born. Has a year seriously gone by? She is absolutely adorable.
BTW, you look really skinny under that red gingham.
So sorry to hear about the van :( We had a drive from Vegas like that (4 hours that turned into 8). We were in the desert (110 degrees) with carburetor issues. Not fun at all :(
Posted by: Jenn | August 14, 2007 at 01:51 AM
Total cutie! I love all the pictures :)
Nell
Posted by: casual friday everyday | August 14, 2007 at 07:35 PM