Archive for September 12th, 2009
Our plan was to leave my parents’ house, stop off in Columbia, SC for lunch and a meet-up with one of our China travel mates, and then overnight in Savannah before pushing on to Orlando. That would give us about 6 hours in the car which we’ve learned is Ava’s breaking point for time in the car seat.
We had a slow start to the morning (which was perfectly fine) so Ava got some Mamaw time where they read books to each other and watched some weird kids TV show with a sock puppet. They were engrossed, can’t you tell?
We finally made it out at a decent hour and had an easy and pleasant drive drive to SC. Unfortunately we weren’t able to make the meetup happen – poor planning on my part, I think – and conflicting schedules but it turned out this was probably a good thing when I looked in the back seat and saw this.
You know that old saying about letting sleeping dogs babies lie, right? Well, there was no way I was going to wake this kid up while we could knock out a couple more miles of driving in peace and quiet, so we let her sleep and kept on driving until she woke up – at which time we stopped in Rock Hill for a bite of lunch.
Thanks to a randomly downloaded iPhone app we ended up at a really, really greasy spoon diner called The Little Cafe. In keeping with the ‘little’ theme there just happened to be a mini-convention of Smart cars there – little cars parked everywhere – with their not so little drivers taking up most of the restaurant inside.
The menu consisted of all things fried. Deep fried hot dogs, deep fried twinkies, deep fried eggs, and so on. J had a burger and fries and I attempted to order a veggie plate for both Ava and me. Yes, it was on the menu and no, we didn’t get it. In actuality they don’t serve any vegetables there on Saturdays. Seriously. The only vegetables they had were french fries, hashbrowns, and onion rings. You can see that I did put forth an effort to eat healthy by attempting the veg plate but after that got nixed I just gave into all things oil and ordered a BLT and onion rings. I bet they even deep fried the bacon…it was greasy enough.
Note the applesauce in the background? That was our attempt to order something healthy for Ava. She didn’t touch it of course, mainly because she was too busy shoveling my onion rings and J’s fries into her mouth.
This place was packed, by the way. Clearly a favorite of the locals.
We wrangled Ava back into the car and pushed on to Georgia with only one pitstop – J had an undeniable need for a Dairy Queen blizzard (something we only ever eat on road trips) and, “ohmygoodnesshoneywhatacoincidence, there’s a geocache here at this truck stop, too. We should let Ava stretch her legs and maybe I’ll just pop over there and find that one really quick.”
So J deserted us and I asked Ava to smile for a picture or 50. She said no.
But then I got one of my most favorite shots of her EVER! Well, favorite except she looks like a proper little girl here. WHERE has my baby gone?!?!
We made it to Savannah in record time and headed for our hotel – right in the Historic District. And just so y’all know – when I win the lottery and/or become independently wealthy this is where I want to live. I loved it…the houses, the trees with the Spanish Moss hanging so low you could reach out and touch it, just the whole atmosphere of this part of the city.
We dumped everything off and headed out to walk ’round the historic area where we found our dream house.
It’s my dream house because of the wrap around porches. And the shutters.
It’s J’s because it’s located right beside a fire station.
J totally used Ava as an intro and an excuse for a tour of their newest fire truck. Granted, she loved it but I think J loved it just a little bit more.
We walked and walked and walked. And rested, because it was HOT!
And then walked some more. Or maybe not. Someone had another boneless moment when she was told she either had to hold Daddy’s hand or ride in the stroller.
Needless to say she ended up in the stroller about 3 seconds after the last picture. She was screamy – good thing we were in a cemetery where no one cared. Although, come to think of it, she was loud enough to wake the dead.
We ended with lunchables in the room for dinner and a quick swim in the rooftop pool before bedtime. (Come on – you KNEW you were going to see more wet baby pictures at some point.)
The pool at the hotel was awesome. It was a rooftop pool with a lovely view of the surrounding area. J and Ava were the only ones actually using the pool although there was a steady stream of people coming to peer off the top floor and take pictures of the riverfront.
The night ended on a bit of a low note. After some mutual splashing…
Miss Ava broke one of our cardinal rules of pool playing. NO RUNNING. She did and (you’ll note the tiled pool surround, right?) fell – thunking her little head hard. She cried. I cried. I worried about Natas.ha Richardson and googled the nearest hospital. J monitored her pupils and reaction times and we kept her up for a couple of hours longer than usual before letting her fall asleep in bed with us. And she was fine, thank goodness.