Here We Go Visiting!

One might assume that while I was off work for 2 months on maternity leave and Eric joining me on paternity leave for 6 weeks of the same time, we may have been able to steal away a weekend to visit with family and friends.

I'm afraid that wasn't the case.

Nope, we sat home and stared at our wonderful boy, played with our little girl and stayed busy every single day without fail. Unfortunately, we just kind of ran out of time to cross everything off of our to-do-list in such a short period of time. So, do you want to know what we do about that now?

We have super-duper-extra-busy weekends all at once! Grand!

For so long, we had planned on going to visit my brother, sister-in-law and Colin. And just for a bonus in our weekend, I really had the best intentions on joining up with Kate's friend Heather and sweetie-blog-star-son, Wesley. Elaina has been a longtime fan of her cousin Colin and Wesley via their blog pictures and videos. As luck would have it, our best laid plans caught a snag early on and made seeing Wesley impossible. (Heather, I'd like to request a rain check for a trip to COSI to get the three little munchkins together before we have to pay adult admission for them!)

So, let me tell you how much we enjoyed our weekend otherwise. Eric and I got on the road especially early on Saturday to be able to take full advantage of the time we had available. Colin welcomed Elaina with a gentle hug while Aunt Kate was busy squeezing all kinds of love and hugs onto her little nephew, Lincoln. We headed out to one of Colin's favorite parks, known simply as the "Bunny Park." Why do they call it the Bunny Park? Quite simply because it has three 2o foot bunnies dancing in a circle atop a giant hill. Aahhh... the bunny park. Better than bunnies, it has jumping water. Elaina had a ball playing in the water and catching it in her buckets. With the temperature stretching into the 90's, it was a welcome relief to get splashed by the cool spurts of water.

After the kids had their fill of drenching for the day, we decided that it was time to head back to the house for some dry clothes, naps and bottle time for Lincoln. While I was tempted to bring Lincoln a little closer to the fountains for the water to splash on his feet, I decided he was more than comfortable just hanging out in the shade of his stroller with his dad.

After naps and warm goodbyes, we were headed off to our next destination. Another set of abandoned friends that we had been desperately trying to arrange a weekend visit with.

Eric has been great friends with Duane since college and we've been close with him and his wife, Jayna, ever since. They have 3 gorgeous little ladies at home ages 4 to 11. When we first arrived, Elaina made her way right down to the basement play area without any prompting or encouragement other than being told that her "friends" were waiting down there to play with her. Just for the record, Elaina hasn't seen these girls since last year when she was about 15 months old. From the minute they connected, the four of them played together like they had known each other for the past 10 years!

We had a great time visiting and enjoyed watching Elaina interact and play so nicely with girls almost 3 times her age.

I'm not particularly sure which dice I played to have such bad luck this weekend, but on Sunday morning, I woke up with flu symptoms. Sheer misery. The kind of misery that lets you heave a little and then leave a little if you get my drift. And at our friends house. Seriously embarrassing. I have to admit that just the little, tiny part of me that was still rational and conscious was a little bit glad that we woke up to rain on Sunday morning and ruined our plans for hanging out by the pool. Without exaggeration, I could barely walk, speak or sit up. I'm telling you: MI-SER-Y!!

By 2:00, Eric managed to load up all of our loot, gather the kids and his decrepit wife and get us on the road for home. While I felt barely human, I did not get sick and didn't even have to reach for my barf bag once. Sometimes it's the little things that you have to find joy in.