"You May All Go to Hell, and I Will Go To Texas"

If you are offended by this blog post title it's probs because you've never lived in Texas, and you should feel left out. No, actually the quote was said by Davy Crocket and I love how bossy it is. (I really only used it because I am running out of things to title my blog posts about our trips to Texas.) After watching T and D I had another week in Texas to play with family, see friends, and to go to the State Fair. Basically we have no problem keeping busy. It was fabulous.

One weekend my sister-in-law's neighborhood was having a block party while the nearby airstrip was having an airshow. Basically it was a party at the playground while jets flew around in awesome formations. Can you imagine anything cooler? Probably not. There was a firetruck, face painting, a bounce house (which Jack was totes afraid of), and best of all - free hot dogs!

   

Have I mentioned how hilarious my nephew is? 

My bestie of all time is all professional now and in medical school but whenever I am in Texas we make sure to see each other. Until a few years ago her parents had several acres of land and they always had cows and horses. Recently they had to sell their cows due to upcoming construction and soon after they found a calf wandering around and realized they had sold his Momma. So now they are just raising the calf themselves, bottle feeding him and all. Amy (my bestie) invited me and Jack over to play with him and he was so cute. His name? Oh it's just Brisket.

 

 

Brisket was so cute and jumped around the entire time we were there.

If you are ever in the Dallas area in the Fall and you do not go to the Arboretum then you are a fool. A fool I tell you! Basically the Arboretum is already awesome but in the fall they add a display that consists of 15,000 pumpkins. Seriously. There are pumpkin houses, pumpkin horses, hay bale mazes, and every size and color pumpkin imaginable. I knew Jack would love it. Since Halloween was only a few weeks away I had just begun explaining to Jack what Halloween was and he quickly caught on the pumpkins were a crucial part.

   


I for reals love my Jack.

Everything about Texas was great. We have been home now for a little over a month now and we are already missing everyone. I'm beginning to think it is their turn to come visit us... 

Back To Texas

Okay I know what you're thinking, and no we do not live in Texas. We are actually living in Provo but according to my blog we spend about as much time here as we do in Texas. Well, that might be true but I don't want to talk about it. However, this trip was not my idea it was Colleen's. (Although I really am never opposed to going to Texas)

So Colleen is pretty much the biggest hair diva I know. We first met when I was about 15 after she and my Mom became fast friends while Colleen colored her hair. She had two young girls so naturally my Mother offered up my services as a babysitter. I began watching the girls, D who was six and T who was three, for Colleen and her husband's date nights. I fell in love with them immediately. I mean they were adorbs with their red hair and personalities - D is lovable, helpful and sweet while T is bossy, loud, and hilarious.

   

The weekend babysitting job eventually turned into my summer job while I was in high school and a "nanny" job between semesters at BYU. Then when Gar and I were planning our wedding (lesbehonest my Mother and I planned our wedding) D and T were the obvious choice for my flower girls.

            Well fast forward almost three years to the end of this past September. Colleen and her husband's anniversary was coming up and they planned a fabulous trip to Italy to celebrate... without the girls. So they flew Jack and I to Texas to watch the girls, the house, and the dogs.

It was kind of crazy, I went from having one baby to having one baby, one kid and one pre-teen. I went from living in a tiny apartment to having an entire house where my apartment could easily fit into just my new kitchen and living room. (Also my new bathroom included a huge walk in shower with two shower heads. AMAZING.) And we went from having a tiny front yard and a parking garage for a backyard to having an acre, a pool, and neighbors with horses. Get the picture? I thought it would be overwhelming but it wasn't at all. The girls were so helpful, even when Jack was tearing apart their legos (which I was informed are "fragile and not for babies!!"). Oh, and of course we had a blast.

The ten days went by fast. Mornings were always sups busy - I had to get the girls up, make sure they were getting ready, make lunches (I had to make T a salad for lunch everyday and her choice of dressing? Oh just the salad dressing from Olive Garden. In fact, it's the only salad dressing she'll eat. She's awesome.) and then drop them each off at school. T would get home from school first and Jack and I would always be outside waiting to play.

  

 

So even though I am a good rule-follower, I still want to be the "cool babysitter." Some of my coolness included making them root beer floats in their parent's chilled beer mugs, took them to see Pitch Perfect and every once and a while I would let them stay up late on school nights. One day in particular the girls talked nonstop about watching Freaky Friday (the Lindsay HoeHan edition, of course) after Jack went to bed and I could tell they were really looking forward to it. That night when Jack went to bed and after the girls had gotten themselves ready for bed we started the movie. Well when we were only about 15 minutes into the movie it was time for T to go to bed. When I told T it was her bedtime she got really upset about missing out and tears built up in her eyes. So as the coolest babysitter around I let her stay up for 15 more minutes. The next morning I decided I would hit the snooze button and wake up T 15 minutes late to make up from the night before. No big deal, right? Well when T came to the kitchen for breakfast and saw the clock she flipped. She sat at the bar and between bites of her lucky charms she lectured me about how she HAS to be woken up at 6:45 - not matter what! So finally I said, "Well T, I woke you up 15 late because you wanted to stay up 15 past your bedtime." Want to know her response? (And you have to picture a nine year old gingie saying this, in all seriousness) "Well Buh-rooke, you need to make more adult decisions and make me go to bed at my bedtime!" I immediately started laughing, which did not amuse her, but then stopped when I realized she was right...

 

One night while I was watching the girls there was a fabulous Texas rainstorm. However, the fabulousness of the rainstorm was lost when we realized that it messed up the internet. After a few days without internet and some frantic data plan emails back and forth with Colleen I found out that it was fixable. All that was required was for us to reboot the router - which was up in the attic. No big deal. Soon enough all four of us were in Colleen's closet/Jack's bedroom looking up at the ceiling where the pull-down stairs were. I have actually never pulled down attic stairs before, but how hard could it be? I mean I've pushed out a baby so pulling down attic stairs will be nothing. We were all excited to have the internet back up in 20ish minutes. So I grabbed the string and began to pull open the stairs and all of a sudden this pasty white lizard flung out. Hell broke loose. Everyone began screaming (maybe this included me), the girls ran out of the closet and Jack began crying out of fear (or confusion, but whatevs). Once everything calmed down I began to realize that the dumb lizard was just somewhere in this closet that my son was sleeping in. Not cool. I tracked down the lizard who was clinging to a suitcase and tried to figure out how to get the stupid lizard out of there without having to touch it (because that would be disgusting). I grabbed the suitcase, threw it into Jack's pack-and-play and then D and I slowly carried the entire thing out to the back patio and flipped it over. Once the nasty lizard ran off we brought everything inside and laughed and laughed about the entire thing. We eventually called a neighbor who quickly came to our internet rescue.

When the ten days were coming to an end we began to prepare to go back to our normal lives. We went out for our last dinner together, I packed up my suitcase, took apart Jack's crib and we filled the driveway with welcome home chalk. The day that Colleen and her husband were coming home was very exciting - you could just see it in the girls' faces. When we got to the airport the girls spotted their parents waiting outside on the curb and they were out of the car before I could put it in park. We hit up Outback (their favsies) on the way home and opened our fabulous Italian presents.

Basically I had a great time and I think the girls did too. It was fun to take on more responsibilities and basically play house; but at the same time it helped me appreciate what I do have on a daily basis. For example, I often get annoyed that we live in a little apartment but when I had a huge house I realized how much more difficult it was- chasing Jack around wore me out and cleaning took a lot (I mean A LOT) longer. I also missed Garrett; I missed having his help and I especially missed his company. I love my little family and I loved adding those two girls for 10 days. 

Love them always.

Ozarks in August

What the what is my problem? How did I get so behind? Oh I remember, I spent like three hours writing this fabulously hilarious and adorbs blog post like two months ago and then I accidentally deleted the ENTIRE thing. It was awful. Like tragic. Basically I was so annoyed that I had no desire to blog again. But I have been through the grieving process and I am ready to get back to the blog.

Well way back in August (I know, I know, who even remembers what they were doing in August) the Blanchard clan joined the whole Hagee family on a little vacay to the lake of the Ozarks in Missouri. You're probably thinking, "Missouri?? Sick." and most of the time I would agree with you, except the Ozarks is da bomb. (I mean, Brangelina has a home there) However, for those of you who do not know, both of my parents are Missourians. Born and raised. They love Missouri (to the point where it is embarrassing) and take any opportunity to go there.

Since Billy was gone for two years it had been a while since we went on a family vacation together. In fact the last family vacation we went on was before Garrett and I were married, so this was the first Hagee family vacation both him and Jack were experiencing. The drive from McKinney to the Ozarks is about 8 hours and thanks to the DVD player in my parents suburban Jack didn't mind it. Everyone else might not have enjoyed watching/listening to Finding Nemo, Barney, and Cars for that long but it's better than listening to a screaming baby, right? Also we were glued to our phones playing each other in Scramble with Friends (if you've never played be careful, it's sups addicting).

We stayed at this cute Lodge where we all shared a cabin, there were rooms for everyone and the laundry room made a nice place for Jack's crib. Don't judge. In our "front yard" there was a full playground, a pool and a game room. However, the best part was our backyard:

  Like for reals, it was awesome. Being out on the lake is my favorite and I would love to someday own a boat. Until then I'll be totes fine with renting boats from Mark. Who is Mark, you ask? Well quick background, most of my parent's high school friends haven't left Missouri and the few that have share the same passion for the state as Harlow and Jennifer. Oh and whenever any of them are together they act just like they did in high school, pranks and all. It's amazing. (I mean, have you ever seen a group of 50-something year old men play with a fart machine? I have; it was at my Dad's high school reunion basketball game) Well Mark is one of these friends and he owns/run/plays all day at his own Marina and Gas Dock from which you can rent boats and jet skis. But for reals, if you are ever at the Ozarks go to his gas dock - free ice, coffee, koozy cups, gum, and entertainment. Mark is hilarious, every time we drove up on the boat for gas he would yell, "HERE COME THE GRISWALDS!!!" which yes, was equally embarrassing and funny. Plus he brings his dogs to work and who doesn't love dogs? 


A few weeks before the trip Garrett and I were talking and he asked, "So what are we going to do if Jack hates the boat?" It was kind of a scary realization, I mean basically the entire trip was planned around the fact that we would be boating daily. Jack loves the water but we knew there was a good chance that he might be afraid of the boat or that he just wouldn't want to be on the boat for very long. Well don't worry, Jack loved the boat. I mean he would want to go hang out on the boat when it was just sitting in the dock. What he didn't like was when anyone rode on the tube. It was actually pretty funny, when anyone was on the tube they were often yelling and laughing and we would have to reassure Jack that no one was getting hurt.

 

We did actually do other things besides the boat, even though you wouldn't know from the pictures so far. We spent a few of the mornings going jet skiing and every night we would play board games and make fun of each other. Of course we went out to eat, because that's half of the fun of vacations (lesbehonest) and I may or may not have found the only cupcake place in all of the Ozarks (it's a gift I have). We went to a car show, mini golfed and one afternoon while the guys golfed we hit up the downtown shops, one of which was a bong shop and it was hilarious.

Peace out Ozarks.