My Mom Took a Skull on an Airplane

In April our family took a trip to Denver to see Sami and Austin where they moved this past August. It was the first time we've all been on a trip together since Myrtle Beach in 2009! Sami planned out our entire trip and made sure we saw all the best parts of Denver, and also took us outside the city to Rocky Mountain National Park, Boulder, and Golden. We had perfect weather the entire trip and we ran our butts off. While the parks and restaurants and sites were all glorious and unforgettable, perhaps more memorable were some of the things that happened just in our Air B&B or in the rented minivan that we all 7 rode around in for the long weekend. (Shout out to Dad who drove the entire time and endured the opinions of 6 backseat drivers!)

First of all, on Day 1 of the trip, we were exploring the Red Rocks Amphitheatre when my mom got a news alert on her phone. "Prince died!" she told us. We were shocked! You see, the last time we were all on vacation together in the summer of 2009, Michael Jackson died. Our entire beach trip became unintentionally Michael Jackson themed as every radio station played his songs, stores put up tributes to him, TV stations played his videos and movies about him... Well, sure enough, our Denver trip quickly became Prince themed. The minivan bumped "Kiss" and "Party Like it's 1999" that week more times than I want to remember. Now we are worried to go on another vacation all together because it seems every time we do, a pop star dies. And we can't lose Justin Timberlake!

Another memorable event was on Day 1 when we noticed that the spice cabinet in our Air B&B was meticulously organized, labeled and ALPHABETIZED. The owner of the Air B&B was a 30-40 something year old single male. We became convinced we had a Dexter situation on our hands. Who else is that anal and organized besides a trained, skilled serial killer?

And speaking of creepy things, I should tell you about the skull. You see, Sami is in Denver to get her Masters in Anthropology. She is an archaeology nerd, so naturally we often buy her things like Laura's most recent Christmas gift, a skull painted with chalkboard paint that is also a piggy bank! When Sami flew back to Denver after Christmas, she didn't have room to take all of her gifts, so my mom made sure to pack the skull with her to bring to Denver. But instead of packing it in her suitcase like most people do when they travel with skulls, she brought it in her carry-on. Imagine the look on the TSA guy's face when he saw this thing go through the scanner at the airport.

Because Denver is spread out and we visited places outside the city, we spent a LOT of time in the car together. (We flew to Denver, just FYI. That would have been a serious road trip to drive from Louisville.) The time in the car gave lots of great conversations. We learned about how Laura's friends supposedly led "an uprising" against her in the 4th grade and she's still not over it. We discussed Sami's fear of boats and Mom scared her by saying she thinks her fear of water comes from when she was "submerged in ice water as a baby" before her heart surgery, which led Sami to believe she was killed and brought back to life until Dad chimed in with the important detail that just her body was put in the ice water, not her head/face. On the last day, I had an outburst in the backseat when my sisters were trying to convince my dad to stop for restrooms 20 minutes from home. I was arguing that we should not stop so close to home and when they kept trying to overrule me I shouted "I NEVER GOT SWIM LESSONS AS A KID AND YOU TWO DID!" I have no idea how stopping for the bathroom and swim lessons are related, but for some reason I had a middle child moment and needed to know why I was never taught to swim and only taught to float. And now that I'm thinking about it, like Sami I should probably ALSO have a fear of boats because if one I'm on ever sinks, everyone else will swim to safety and I'll just have to float until someone rescues me.

Austin and Chuck are brave men.

Besides sight-seeing and riding in the van, we did a lot of other things too. We played a lot of games in bars. (Side note: if you have never played the card game "Exploding Kittens," do yourself a favor and order it on Amazon NOW and play it ASAP.) We walked a LOT and Austin lied to us constantly about how close certain destinations were to keep us from getting discouraged. We ate a ton of good food. We toured a whiskey distillery (because, duh). We climbed a mountain, sort of. We looked for Peyton Manning. We debated the origin of elk (are they a mix between donkey and deer?). We went from place to place with a schedule but also with no real agenda at the same time.

Of course the mountains were breathtaking and the elk everywhere in the park were amazing and the food was great and getting to see Sami and Austin's new 'hood was fun... but the best thing about the vacation was knowing that our family could go literally anywhere in the world together and have a good time.

But, unfortunately we'll never get that chance, you know- because of the whole pop star thing.

Don't Call it a Comeback

I miss blogging. I realized this one day recently when I randomly got the urge to blog. I didn't even have an idea of what I wanted to write about, but I just wanted to write something. So here I am. I loved blogging when we were living in Boston and Seattle. It was something fun to do and a fun way to keep everyone at home updated on our adventures in other cities. Now that we're back in Louisville, I see most of my friends and family who read the blog regularly, so I haven't felt the need to keep posting pictures and updates on our life. I also got the feeling no one would really care to read that this weekend, Chuck and I alternated between binge watching Boy Meets World and New Girl episodes. But look at that- here I am telling you anyway!

I have no idea how often I'll write or what I'll even write about. But to kick things off again, here are some things I may blog about moving forward.

- The time Kroger moved everything around and I almost had a panic attack.

- Cute photos of our nieces and our friends' babies.

- Stories from our Denver trip with the fam including my middle child outburst in the backseat of the minivan, the creepy spice cabinet at our Air B&B, and how my mom took a replica skull through airport security.

- My quest to become BFFs with the ladies of Hi-Five Doughnuts.

- Thoughts on the Windows Surface I got through work and how I will escape to Mexico with mine if they ever try to take it away from me.

- My self-imposed Panera ban and thoughts on hypochondria and how those two things are related.

- An occasional sappy post about how awesome Chuck is because he's really cool and deserves at LEAST a good blog post every now and then.

- The mystery surrounding people's constant need to tell me private details about their life when I ask a simple question, or sometimes when I don't ask at all like the UPS lady that told me she moved to Louisville from Virginia Beach because her mother lives in Cleveland so she wanted to be closer but not TOO close, because well, ya know she and her mom have never gotten along that great but now that she's older she really felt she needed to be closer just in case....YA KNOW????

- Musings on TV shows, recipes, and daily life occurrences.

- Whatever else life decides to throw at me and Chuck which judging by the last 2 years, could be anything all the way from AMAZING BEST THING EVER to "You thought you had the worst day of your life already but surprise, it's actually today!" (Hopefully more of the former than the latter.)

Let's do this!

(Here's a pic of Chuck and his youngest niece at Derby, because I know the cute niece and baby pics are the only reason anyone will look at this blog from this point forward.)