As I mentioned in my Friday blog, we had some tentative plans for this weekend that I did not disclose. I am happy to report that they did indeed come to fruition and that the happenings will be enclosed in today's post.
Chris' dad and his family (step-mom and 4 children ages 14 and under) are moving from Oregon to Texas and since I had never met them and they hadn't seen Chris in over 3 years, they decided to add a few hours to their trip and meet us in a neighboring city. They gave word that they would meet us on Saturday evening and we would go eat and spend some time together. Chris and I left our house around 4:00 PM, the city we agreed to meet in is about an hour and a half drive for us. When we left our house, they let us know that they had about 2 hours until they also reached said meeting place.
When we arrived, we killed some time by stopping at a few stores. We browsed Walmart, Fred Meyer and the local (very sad) mall. Walmart was having an outrageous sale on Blu-rays, so we ended up buying quite a few of them. By the time we were done browsing all of these stores it was pretty late and Chris' family still had not arrived. We had planned on meeting at a buffet (Chris' half siblings were all really excited about it, but buffets are not my favorite...). We were sitting in the buffet parking lot when Chris received a call from his dad asking about local hotels.
I'll skip all the boring details and just say that eventually we met up in a hotel parking lot and waited for them to check into a hotel room. I met them all, they were nice and fun. Two of them are 8 year old twins, both of which are adorable. Then there are the two oldest, one boy and one girl, also fun and adorable. As we were leaving the hotel we had a fun incident with Chris' car.
We normally don't lock it since we live in a fairly safe town, but since we were in a different, slightly more sketchy city, we locked it when we went into the hotel. Now, Chris' car has an alarm on it, which has never given us any trouble before. I'm sure you can guess, but when he went to unlock it the car alarm went off. It's around 8:00 PM in a hotel parking lot and Chris' car alarm is the LOUDEST I have EVER heard. He tried locking it and unlocking it, he tried using his disarm button, we even went so far as to unplug the horn fuse from the car, but nothing seemed to be working. It did this twice. Eventually it stopped annoying the entire world and I thought we would head on our merry way. But Chris and his dad decided to have a heart to heart in front of the car, with the hood up while the rest of us waited.
Don't get the wrong impression here, I understand that it had been over 3 years since they'd last seen each other. But the poor kids had been stuck in a car all day, they were tired and hungry and the last thing they wanted to do was sit in their car more and wait for them to be finished with their chat. Chris said the chat was good, he saw a lot of positive changes in his dad and he was happy to have had it. I can't say the same thing for me or the rest of his family...
We didn't end up eating until around 8:45. As I mentioned, I'm not big on buffets, but the kids had fun. There was a chocolate fountain, which was thrilling for them. How they ate so many chocolate covered marshmallows is beyond me.
After eating, we headed back to the hotel to hang out for a while. It was around 10:30 by the time we left the buffet. The kids were all hyped up on sugar and I was tired, as usual. I knew it was going to be a late night since we still had to drive home, but I don't think I realized how late it was going to be.
We hung out in the hotel room, they were all wild and crazy with their sugar high. There was an endless pillow fight and it was interesting to see a family dynamic that was so different than the one that I grew up with. Diversity can be good, and I saw a lot of things that added up as far as Chris and his habits go. It was pretty late by the time things were winding down.
Chris' dad gave us the option of staying the night there. Since I can't drive his car and he was pretty tired (still has a kidney issue going on...) we decided that staying the night would be a good thing and they paid for a room for us. We had not planned on staying the night so we had absolutely nothing for that night or the next morning, so we made another trip to Walmart to get some essentials.
As we were getting ready to leave the parking lot Chris' car alarm decided to go off again...it added about ten minutes to our trip. We finally got the stupid thing quiet again and headed back to the hotel. It had been a long day and the night was long gone (thanks to daylight savings we lost an hour!) So by the time we got back to our room it was around 3:30 AM. I was not going to bed without a shower (car rides, warmer weather, anxiety....not a good combination) so by the time I was in bed it was around 4:30. Chris had gone back to his family's room and given his dad a birthday massage.
I read in bed until he returned and we both crashed hard until around 11:00 the next morning. We woke up, got ready for the day checked out of our room and found ourselves once again in his family's room. The kids were all showered and they were packing up to head out. They still had about 21 hours worth of driving and weren't planning on stopping again, so they were trying to leave as soon as they could.
We said our goodbyes, Chris and I stopped to grab a bite to eat and we made the journey home. It was fun to meet that side of his family and since we don't know when we'll see them again (it's not like we make frequent trips to Texas...) it was nice to, for lack of a better term, get it out of the way.
It wasn't quite the restful weekend I was hoping for, we ended up going over to my house to play games with my family last night too, but it as fun and family filled and good for Chris. I know he missed his siblings terribly. He was cute with them, especially the twins who said random, but hilarious things at key moments in conversations.
So, that was my weekend. Crazy! I am sure the above story is fraught with grammatical errors, but as it is Monday and I am running on a serious lack of sleep, you'll have to forgive me. I personally do not care this morning. I hope you turned your clocks appropriately and didn't wake up at the wrong time!
Bergen Says: I want my hour back!
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