It was a quiet afternoon...
I was editing away, merrily and contentedly, when I took a break to answer my emails. There was one from my mom: "hey, we should all go to North Carolina and surprise your brother for his birthday. If you're up for it, I'll pick you guys up on Friday and we'll come back Sunday."
Welcome to a tizzy! All of a sudden, I had 2 days to do a week's worth of editing, clean the house, pack, and get ready for a weekend road trip.
I will interject here that my husband is an incredible man. Of all that I listed, I could not accomplish but the first item--the editing. He did every ounce of the cleaning--several hours' worth of work. We both packed, but that was mostly throwing clothes into a bag 5 minutes before leaving. He made sure we had food to eat and made me several cups of hot tea to enjoy while I busily typed away.
So, my mom, little sister, and little brother arrived (while my clothes to pack were in the dryer--talk about last-minute. I'm not this kind of person!!!) and we crammed into Mom's Santa Fe and embarked. We drove up to Knoxville to get dinner and introduced Mom to Five Guys. I ate a small cheeseburger (surprisingly, the whole thing) and thoroughly enjoyed it. The only part that made me a little uneasy was when I saw pink in the meat...after I'd already swallowed the bite in my mouth. "Oh well, let's hope listeriosis isn't on my to-do list for today" and I finished the burger.
Chris was asleep when we got there and thoroughly surprised. Mom baked him his favorite cake--a carrot cake, and he groggily ate a wedge and we all chatted some before he crawled back in bed.
The next morning, Mom, Katina, and I got up super early as there was a nearby consignment thingie going on in one of the massive agricultural buildings (read, warehouse with clothing racks almost as long as a house) and all the maternity stuff was going to be half price. When we got there, we all but sprinted to the maternity section (which Katina had found the day before) and began yanking clothes off the racks with gusto. We made a pile next to the wall and sorted through it once we had found everything in my size that didn't have obvious rips or stains. The event was filling up quickly, and we even had someone ask to look through our reject pile before we finalized our choices and headed for checkout. Besides an entire wardrobe of maternity clothes, we found several "AC/DC" (that was my mom's term, to our shock) baby outfits, a wrap, a bag of bottles, a baby carrier (backpack sort of thing), and a buggy liner. My mom was ecstatic when she saw the final total: less than $160.00.
The rest of our trip was spent talking and playing a Rook tournament. We had a great time, a great trip back, and a ton of fun just getting to spend time with family. We really enjoyed getting to hear Chris preach, as usual, and took him out to Carrabba's for his birthday lunch.
Minja caused little to no issue the entire time we were there! Hooray! Of course, that night was another story, but that was after the road trip was long over.
And a good time was had by all.
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