Walking Backwards

So, my trip to Louisiana . . . It wasn't really all that exciting. The one exciting thing that happened was - Joe left all of our clothes there. I know, not even good exciting. Here is the low-down:

We drove in Friday night and arrived in Houston at about 11. Nicholas was still awake, he didn't go to sleep until almost one in the morning. We were all in one bed, which Nico has grown away from apparently because he spent the entire night trying to get either me or Joe off of the bed by way of kicks and shoves. I wasn't too chipper the next morning, but I woke up at about 7:30 to a quiet and still asleep house. I took this opportunity to do my very extensive homework assignment for psych class. One pot of coffee and half of the paper later, my child and husband rolled out of bed. After a breakfast of cookies and yogurt (our in-laws weren't going to be home until later that day so the cupboard was bare), we headed out to IKEA. Surprisingly, I did not spend my son's college fund in a fit of IKEA induced frenzy. I walked away with some art supplies for Nicholas, some mounting brackets for the curtains in our room, and some kid dishes. I wanted to get a bookshelf that I found in the "as-is" section, but it was already assembled and just wouldn't fit in our compact car that way. Too bad because it was really cheap and we sorely need one right now. Nothing much for the rest of the day. The in-laws arrived back from their side trip to help my sister-in-law clear out her old apartment and my brother-in-law, Jon, drove in from Austin. We watched Hitch and ate some newly-acquired junk food. Hitch wasn't too bad, cute for what it was. We got to bed at midnight this time with the instruction that we were to be ready to leave for Lake Charles at 8 the next morning. Right . . . I hadn't even had a shower yet. I got up the next morning at eight, exactly when I told my aggrieved in-laws that I was waking up. They were still there and still getting ready. I proceeded to shower, wake up my two boys, and feed the guys breakfast. We were on the road at about 9:15 . . . about forty-five minutes behind my in-laws, but without a birthday gift. Never fear, the whole branch of the family was without a birthday gift. A quick phone call exchange and the decision to pool our money on a digital camera was reached. My in-laws offered to pick one up on the way, bridging the gap between our leaving times. We ended up arriving about fifteen minutes after they did. Lots of food and laughter later and we were back on our way to Houston. Nicholas spent the entire time playing with the pool table and was generally surly to anyone who distracted him from this task at hand. When we got back to Houston, Joe and I made the decision to return to Austin. We both wanted to stay and hang out with the family, but the desire for a good night's sleep won out. By the time we had gotten home, Joe and I had almost nine hours of driving under our belt in a single day. Waking up the next morning was disheartening because, while I slept a million times better and actually felt like I might be alive, I realized Joe had forgotten our laundry bag which contained all my comfiest clothes. They are being mailed to us. How odd is that?

So that was my trip. Not too bad. I really had fun with Joe's family even though they are totally insane. We are heading back in two weeks for an engagement party. Let's just see how soon our personalities can wear on each other.