day1. my family picked me up from boring boring Waco. seriously, there was hardly anyone there anymore and i'm not exactly close to my staff to hang out, and i was tired of watching Gilmore Girls. there are only so many times you can watch Lorelei Gilmore screw up her love life. haha. I did get to have a pretty sweet late night chat with my future roomie (shout out to you Abbs). My family rolls into Waco with a sweet giant luggage rack on the top of our van which is oh so helpful and really necessary, but so awkward to be THAT family van rolling down the road. opening the van door, stuff was already falling out which boded well for the spaciousness of the upcoming trip. We get jamming down the road when my mom pulls out my new favorite toy. A LIGHT BRITE!!! A while back i blogged about how i never got a light brite, so she bought a pretty awesome "flat panel" light bright for our trip. Little did we know, the light brite would turn into a great disco ball to dance to some Mariah. good times. Driving late at night with my daddy is one of my favorite things to do, so i always try to snag the front seat for the overnight parts of the trips. Some of my major life decisions have been made in those late night talks... some that were hard to make and just needed a Daddy's ear to spill to. But this trip didn't have any looming major issues, we just talked about Antioch and camp and all the nervous/slash exciting things about me graduating in the semi/not really near future. I love good Dad time, he just listens, and offers solid non-emotionally charged advice and lets me just talk. its good stuff.
day2. longest day of my life. ever. we woke up somewhere in Kansas... i think. maybe. i'm not really sure. I've discovered that not a lot of the rest of the country welcomes you to their state the pomp and circumstance of the "WELCOME TO THE LONESTAR STATE" signs of Texas. They are satisfied with the simple 'now entering Kansas' boring green sign. Come on Kansas, put some pep in your step and find something to get us excited about your turnpike. We drove and drove and drove and drove. and then we got to northern Illinois and drove very very stressfully. It was more of a slow inch through the state because of ice. Life lesson: google maps are great for getting you in a general direction of an area but not so stellar for getting you to specific locations in really out of the way areas that you don't know at all. Proof: getting stuck on the side of a hill on a iced over back country road in Elizabeth Illinois. My poor dad and my brother are outside trying to push the van up this hill, mom is flooring the gas pedal (apparently a bad idea? I didn't know either Mom...), Emily is the sweet nine year old in the back trying not to cry and I'm trying to figure out where Google maps went wrong. ahahaaa.... I just remembered leaving a message on the answering machine for the place we were staying. It went something like this "Hi.... This is the Melinder family driving in from Houston, Texas (their first indication that we are idiots) and I think we may have taken a wrong turn.. (at this point you can hear car wheels squealing and lots of parental shouting) ...and we are stuck somewhere off of.... I'm not sure, actually. If you could give us a call whenever you get this we would really appeciate it. and we might need some help if we are really stuck. Thanks!" The lady didn't call my phone back until two days later. Good going, emergency assistance line. Good going. Eventually we got un-stuck and found our way to the little ranch house we were staying at and settled for the night. BIG sigh of relief.
Day3. NEGATIVE 44 DEGREES. yes. i'm not exaggerating or lying or trying to sound much more hardcore than i truly am... no. it was a wind chill of NEGATIVE 44 and i'm standing on top of this ski slope looking down thinking about Rudolph the red-nose reindeer and how he probably never even dealt with negative 44 degrees. Santa would never have it. Even when he was chillin' on the island of misfit toys, I don't think it was negative 44. I can even comprehend the cold. I've blocked this day from my trip honestly. I got a sweet ski mask with a cute hat attached to it out of the deal and pink ski goggles becuase that was the only way you could ski without getting instant wind burn and potential frostbite on your nose. NO JOKE. but the Melinder family skiied with the best of them and and i will never complain about the Waco "cold" again. I've never been so joyful to see my luggage racked family van in my life, I just wanted out of there.
Day4. We took a day off from the arctic and just hang out at the house to go sledding and play in the snow. I ADORE sledding. really, if it wasn't for the climbing back UP the hill part, I could sled all day long. but it was still so cold that we needed face masks, ahaha. we are so cool. me and the sibs worked on a music video that is still forthcoming, its stellar though... get excited. We discoved the game of Scattegories, my new fav. Hearing Emily come up with the most random things to match the topics is definately worth playing the game. Please, if you are ever bored, go find a nine year old and teach them to play an adult board game like Cranium or Scattegories. its amazing the things they come up with.
Day5. Ski attempt number two. much much much better. the sunny warmth of 10 degrees made skiing actually fun this time and I got to spend the first half of the day skiing with my brother. THAT is an adventure, let me tell you. Its nerve wracking skiing with him, but its good for him to push me to do much harder runs than I am used to. I don't want to chicken out and tell him no on certain runs, so I just follow him and go really slow. It stresses me out, but spending time with him is worth it. Then I grabbed some hot cocoa and skiied with my Mom, we like skiing together because we both like to chill ski. Greens are our friends, haha. Lame, but fun. I really don't like the risk of skiing honestly, its fun but I feel so on edge the whole time. I'm clumsy and shouldn't be sent hurtling down a hill on ice. period. If you ever go to Galena please please go to their Walmart, buy me a a white chocolate caramel cappachino and bring it back to me. I'm now OBSESSED with their extremely large 1.30 cup of coffee.... its good the walmart in Waco doesn't have one of these little coffee stations, otherwise I would be broke and really really fat. If we do have one, don't tell me. Its for my own good.
Day6. Gilmore Girls MUST MUST MUST be based off of the town of Galena. it has to. this town looked straight of out a Thomas Kinkade painting, little lit up churches, hillside stores, old town shopping, the works. We took SO many pictures, and went into so many tiny little shops that had really unique stuff. Really, I just got a lot of ideas for gifts and crafts to make people. wheee craft time!!!! Again, great mom time we shopped FORVER in this ornament store for my yearly special oranament and I had exactly what I wanted in mind, but couldn't find it. Every year since I was 18 my mom bought me a really pretty ornament that was significant for that particular year. My senior year I got a princess crown (yay Belle), last year was a Cinderella glass slipper from our summer Disney trip and this year I really really wanted a pretty crystal looking pine cone (I'll give you one guess why). but this store didn't have it and I settled on a really cute cupcake tower with no other significance other than its extreme cuteness. BUT, then we are walking through the sludge (my feet are falling off because I was dumb and wore cowboy boots... idiot) and we pass by this store that has a tree full of ornanments that look pretty much like pine cones made out of these little crystals, its EXACTLY what i wanted in my head. hooray.
Day7. christmas!!!! This was probably one of the BEST christmas days ever. I was a little worried because I'm really sentimental about everything in life and I didn't know how I would react to a Christmas not only away from our home, but away from a home that we won't go back to. Throughout the trip I found myself getting emotional at the most random times, like I couldn't listen to that pretty song from the Polar Express without tearing up and almost losing it. There is this specific party when the little girl is singing about how Christmas is the time when "everyone comes home," and even though I was having a blast, I couldn't help but be a little sad that I didn't really get to go home at all for Christmas. Going home is such a sacred thing for college kids and right now its really weird to be "home." It was a little bit of a stability crisis for me to hear those words and not be at home and know that my whole defintion of home is different now. But sadness aside, I was super pumped about Christmas. Like the ultimate dork I am, I woke up around 4am on Christmas and couldn't get back to sleep for anything, like I'm five years old or something. The morning was classic Christmas with really stellar stockings, I'm still eating candy. My favorite part though was giving my family their presents, I made them things that were a little more personal that usual. Especially my brother's present, I made him a clock because he has a thing for clocks, its pretty sweet. After cleaning up the whole house, my mom and I worked on an awesome Christmas lunch, complete with mini chocolate pecan tarts MY FAVORITE. yum... we ate them allllll the way to Kansas city. Then off to Chicago!!!!! The drive to Chicago was uneventful, I rocked out to my new iPod and had some sweet Jesus time, I'm beginning to study the book of Hosea since I just finished reading Redeeming Love.... but more on that in a different post. When we FINALLY (yay directions once again) got to our hotel, I just about died. This was the freaking sweetest hotel i've even been inside. Huge huge Christmas tree in the front lobby, great view of the river, but most importantly.... a bellman with a really legit outfit. It had fuzzy things on it and I forgot to get a picture with him. BOO. He had a cool hat too. Chicago is the land of revolving doors, in case you needed to know. EVERY store and building has revolving doors. Of course my brother took this as the obvious invitation to reenact Elf anytime he could. cute. Hanging out at the hotel was cool all on its own, Jorey kept saying that hanging out in the lounge felt like he was in Hitch. haha. If there was ever a place to get a really cool drink, that would've definately been it. but I feel like my baby sister and mother would've objected. just maybe. Then my dad surprised us and had a carriage pick us up from the hotel and take us down teh Magnificent Mile to Hancock Tower. OH MY GOODNESS. The Magnificent Mile is AHmazing, please go ASAP. and take me back there with you. Hancock tower is the second tallest tower in Chicago (the Sears is really the tallest) but Hancock apparently has a better view, its on the more exciting end of town. David Schwimmer (Ross from Friends) did the audio tour which kind of freaked me out a little. I kept feeling like Monica or Chandler were going to pipe in and tell me about the Cubs at any moment. Then we walked back down the Magnificent Mile back to our hotel and got some great pics then too.... there was this cool castley thing in the middle of the city that I loved. Rock the castle.
~INTERMISSION~
Once again.... I'm sorry for the ridiculously long post. If you are still reading you must : A. be really bored on your break B. Love me tons C. Be Haley or Jessie who read all my blogs. Thanks faithful friends.
Please go get yourself a snack or go to the bathroom or stretch out. haha.
~and now back to the show~
Day8. Old Navy was four stories tall. and my heart smiled. At camp whenever we are doing introductions and I get asked "who's your tailor????" I always respond "Old Navy!!" because I really do wear a ridiculous amount of Old Navy clothes (I should probably come up with a more exciting response for driving the bus next summer). Anyway.... me walking into this Old Navy with a gift card was seriously bad. except SO good. My mom looked like she wanted to die by the time we left there. Probably the best part of the whoe trip though was the American Girl Place. I was super obsessed with American Girl when I was Emily's age, so going to the Chicago store has alwasy been a childish dream of mine. I begging and hoped and prayed for an American Girl doll when I was young and ended up getting Samantha right at the end of my doll phase. But Emily got one when she was born... I used to be really bitter about that, but now I'm really glad she has been able to enjoy something I always wanted as she has grown up. Its a treasure of hers and she doesn't take it for granted like other girls might... we got her doll's hair done which was probably one of the most hilarious things I've ever experienced. The whole store was really overwhelming and fun and a little girl's paradise. That night we experience authentic Chicago pizza, and the long long long wait for authentic Chicago pizza. Our days were kind of fuzzy at this point and I don't think anyone in my family clicked that we were trying to get a table on a Friday night in downtown Chicago. bad idea, but the pizza was SOOOO worth it. Magical crust is all I can say... and our waitress was great. Really all of our service in Chicago was amazing, the people were so nice and friendly all the time. I don't think we ran into a single rude person, even people having to work on Christmas day. poor people. I hate that some people have to work on Christmas. BOOOOO. but if they didn't work then I wouldn't have had a place to eat/stay in Chicago so I'm grateful. We left Chicago to go to Kansas City to stay the night but that didn't work out due to the most intense fog I've ever seen in my whole life. Literally ZERO visibility, I thought we were going to die. So I put in the iPod and took a little nap, thanks Shane and Shane for being so chill. After driving for 3 hours and only ending up about an hour out of Chicago, we pulled into a hotel for the night and slept there.
Day9. On the road AGAIN. once we got going I started to get really excited because once we got to Kansas City we would meet up with my friends from Pine Cove. Our awesome camp friend Mark "TooGood" Smedvig was getting married and they roadtripped up to go! So we drove through the worst rain ever (seriously, the weather HATES my family) and finally got to Kansas City in one piece. Haley "Troggie," Abbey "Chrismiss," Allison "Sweet Pea," and Lindsey "Stagattago," had moved into a Starbucks and were waiting at the windows for me with a video camera to document my exciting arrival. haha. and OH was I excited. after some hellos and introductions and cramming my stuff into Allison's car, my family left for the last leg of their trip and my trip turned into a whole other adventure. haha.
OKAY. thats enough for today, the family part of the trip. I will get into the amazingness of the other part of the trip tomorrow, or maybe the next day. my fam is ready for me to get off of the computer and I just ran out of sour cherry cola bottles. sad day.
baha nice title
ReplyDeleteI read all this. I just wanted you to know since you said I would. Haha.
ReplyDeleteSee you soon.