Visit to Lousiville, Cincinnati and Oxford

Sorry it's been so long! We were gone all last week, and this week has been busy trying to get everything back in order and such.

Brad headed to New Orleans for Tech.Ed on Sunday and the girls and I headed to Louisville on Tuesday morning. Once again, there were great on the plane! (And I took Lauren to the doctor the day before we left and found out she had strep throat!) I took the double umbrella stroller, and the hardest thing was going through security by myself. I had to give Alison to two random people so I could fold up the stroller...she was not too happy but not too traumatized. After we had some lunch at Mum Mum's, Lauren and Mum Mum played in this cool frog pool that my mom bought. And she had been saving all sorts of plastic containers for Lauren to play with, and she and my mom were in the pool for about two hours! They had a great time! When Alison got up from her nap, she played in her own little pool and had a great time splashing around.

Wednesday was REALLY rainy, so we went to this awesome place called All About Kids, which is a kids place with a play area and a full gymnasium all in one place. The daughter of one of my mom's friends owns it, and both girls had an awesome time! They had all kinds of inflatables, a ball pit, a couple of climbers, and a full gym with a trapeze. Lauren had such an awesome time on the trapeze...she did it about 4-5 times I think. Alison was just having a good time crawling around. I am glad my mom was with me. I don't think I could have handled that alone. We headed to Frankfort to have dinner with Glen, and it was good to see her, although I missed seeing Bob!

Thursday my mom had to work, so the girls and I hung out at home and then went to lunch with my mom at McDonald's and then went shopping at her Kroger store for some things to take to Tammy's. Lauren was riding in the little car and then she realized there were two seats in the front of the cart, so she decided she wanted to sit there with Alison. And there were so adorable sitting in there together! Alison was patting Lauren and LAuren was giving Alison kisses...they just really love each other. Lauren and I made cookies and then we got the pools out again. This time, Alison kept trying to crawl out of her little pool into the big pool, so I just put her in the big pool with Lauren and she had the best time crawling around and finding toys in there. Thursday night, Anne and Charlie came over for dinner on the way home from their cruise to Bermuda. We enjoyed seeing them and celebrating Charlie's birthday. And Brad finally arrived in Louisville around 9 PM! Lauren was SOOO excited to see her daddy!

Friday, we headed up to Tammy's. BOTH girls slept in the car, which was really nice! We arrived to Tammy's around 11. It was so good to see her and all of her girls! And Shannon came over right around lunchtime. Megan and Lauren play together so well, and they just picked up where they left off the last time. Lauren said her favorite thing was changing clothes lots of times, which they did. They would get a new outfit on and come down and say "Surprise!"

And Alison had a good time playing with all the new toys and their dog, Jack. Tammy m

ade a yummy dinner, and the Mulls joined us for dinner. We left there around 8, (about an hour later than expected!), but Alison fell asleep as soon as we left and Lauren stayed up playing Brad's iTouch.

This picture was the best of the 5 girls we were able to get!

Saturday, Brad & I left for Oxford around 10 AM and it took almost 3 hours to get there because it was raining and there was an accident, but we got there and headed straight for Bagel and Deli of course!! It was SO great to see everyone!!! The guys went to watch the soccer game and the rest of us went for a little nostalgic tour of the campus and got to see the new business building, which is incredible! We checked into the hotel and did the fire up at the hotel bar before the official pub crawl began at 5 at Phan Shin (Matt McConnell's rule!). We hit all the old bars that were still open (some were no longer!) and ended the night at First Run for some dancing of course! And then a late night bagel and Bagel & Deli. The really cool ones who were able to hang until the end were as follows: Me, Brad, Laura, Adam, Shannon, Tammy and Jon Fossitt. We are the only true professionals! (The prego ladies have a good excuse, but not the rest of them!). It was such a great time, and I miss all my Miami peeps so much! And sorry no pics from Miami at this time because I accidentally stuck my SD card into my CD drive on my computer (after Lauren deleted them), so hopefully I can get them back after Brad takes the computer to the Apple store tomorrow.

The girls had a great time in our absence. They went over to Anne & Charlie's and went to the big pool in their neighborhood.

We got back to my mom's around 11:30 on Sunday and had lunch then got packed up and headed to the airport only to find that our flight was delayed an hour because of weather in Philly. So, we left about an hour and a half late, and then we were circling the airport, had to fly to Harrisburg for a fuel stop, and then finally landed in Philly aboud 8:45 (3 hours after scheduled arrival time). Lauren fell asleep on the plane, not Alison, but Alison did pretty well considering! By the time we finally got home, it was about 9:30! Alison fell asleep in the car immediately and tranferred when we got home. Lauren, Brad and I ate dinner about 10 PM and then we all went to bed. Alison slept until 9 on Monday morning and Lauren slept until about 9:30, so that was good for everyone!

All in all, it was a great trip, minus the flight home. I am just SO thankful Brad was with me.