Vacation Time-the Long Version

By now you should know that this is my only journal so you get the play by play of our fabulous trip to Ohio. This last week we got to go to OHIO and visit my brother and his wife and their two adorable little girls. Alli has so much fun playing with Audrey and Julia, and I loved hanging out with Bryan and Annie (and the girls of course too) so it was a win/win all around. Unfortunately we have had camera issues lately-our last trip, up to Idaho for Tyler's baby blessing, was sadly without a camera in our rush to get on the road to see them! and this trip our camera quit working on Friday so the pictures taken before then are unavailable til I transfer the memory card and load them from the other camera and the pictures after our camera broke are courtesy of Annie (so glad she was willing to take extra pics and share them!). I will add more pictures later, but for now this is what we have and we are leaving again in a couple days so I wanted to put these up now. Thursday we went down to a cool market place (North Market) in downtown Columbus. It's an indoor marketplace with all sorts of different ethnic restaurants that are all super freshly made. Ryan got sushi, I got delicious pasta, and Annie got a belgian waffle creation. It all looked amazing. Ryan and I finished it off with some amazing ice cream (Annie was not joking when she said it is the best ice cream ever). It's Jeni's ice cream (you may have seen it on Food Network it's that good) and they have some of the most random flavors, but they are so delicious. We got Gravel Road (salty carmel with roasted almonds), Roxbury Road, and Lemon Yogurt after trying at least 10 different samples. Unfortunately we were a little slow trying, deciding, and eating our ice cream= 25.00 parking ticket that expired no more than 3 minutes before. We drove around downtown, and hung out at Bryan and Annie's house. It is such a fun area, lots of unique different styles of architecture and an eclectic mix of older buildings, newer remodels, and some sophisticated new stuff. Thursday night while Annie was gone, Bryan and the girls and us went for some more ice cream at a place close to their house (Ryan and I don't claim to eat healthy) after which Ryan won a little blue stuff monkey that Alli exclaimed "I Love it" she has picked up some fun, cute new sayings! Friday Ryan's work stuff started so we went and walked around the expo/zoo. It was crazy packed. Longer lines for an entrance than I've EVER seen. The most interesting collection of people/"animals" ever. We saw more too tanned bodies and too much of people's bodies, but had a fun time meeting some of Ryan's customers. In the afternoon Annie and I took the girls to the mall and played on the cool play place there (they have cool planet figures that are THE coolest material and the floor is padded around it so even if they fall or bonk on the figure it doesn't hurt, but the figures are still solid, I've never seen it anywhere else!). There was a carousel ride so of course they had to ride that (a couple times, cause Alli couldn't get enough of it) and they had a super cool toy store with a lot of my favorite brands of kids games and toys. Embarrassing moment-walking out of the mall I could NOT find our rental car anywhere. I had gone out the wrong door with Annie so I walked around there for a couple minutes before I realized so we walked to the other section of that store's parking lot, but I still could not find the car- I knew I was in the right area though because I walked in and made sure that was the correct exit of Macy's. Finally I found it after starting to wonder if our car got stolen :) and wandering the parking lot holding Alli for a good ten minutes-yep I'm a dork! Then after that I was going to go back downtown, but Annie kindly volunteered to watch Alli if I wanted to go back to their house first and go down after she taught a piano lesson so somehow after I missed the exit to get on the other freeway and turned around to get back on so I could get on the right freeway I got on a random side "frontage" road and ended up in farming country 8 miles west of the correct HIlliard (where they live) on the right freeway. The odd thing is that I went off the freeway on the East side, never crossed over it and ended up west??? Don't know how that happened! So there you have it-for the most part I think I can figure out where I'm going (and I ended up getting there), but sometimes I'm not too fast! Friday night Ryan and I went down to an "after party" hosted by one of his biggest customers. We both had our first experience in a bar-pretty exciting I tell ya! I am completely fine "missing out" on that lifestyle. So lame-o: getting checked out by creep o semi-drunk guys etc. etc. Luckily we had VIP passes so we had a private room with an open bar :) that Ryan and I fully took advantage of by each have probably 3 bottles of water and a glass of juice. It was fun dancing though! Bryan (and mostly Annie) were so nice to listen for Alli (that was the hope) in reality Annie ended up being "fortunate" enough to have a baby who wanted to be held so she got to hold Alli from 12-1:30 when Alli would finally lay back down! Saturday was great. Ryan was hoping he wouldn't be at the expo for too long, but he ended up being there a while. We ate at a great sandwich place by a really nice mall with an excellent play place. This time it was the figures were animals, but the same cool material, and there was a treehouse with a slide. Except for the 8-9 year old boys running around telling (or pushing with their feet) the cute little girls they couldn't play on things, it was a lot of fun! Saturday night there was a ward party and then Ryan went to a fight that one of his customers sponsored so they had excellent seats and yet again another after party. Ryan liked the fight, except for there was a lot of blood, and the crowd was bad in that they booed when people weren't getting their faces smashed in. I didn't love that he left for a stupid fight, but had a fun time watching "Mercy" with my brother (he's pretty amazing, I'm sure every guy who is a doctor wants to spend a Saturday night watching a medical tv show with their little sister) and hanging out eating more delicious ice cream Annie brought home for us (same amazing Jeni's ice cream). Sunday was a lot of fun. We went on a walk, went to church, and after dinner they threw Alli a "surprise" party. It was great-balloons, brownies and ice cream, presents including a BIRTHDAY hat and WAND and a littlest pet shop figure. Alli was soo happy with everything-thanks so much for doing that Annie! We played UNO (4 1/2 year old little Julia is quite the player-she won all by herself) and hung out. Monday it was so sad to say bye. We went to this cool pet store and looked at lots of animals and played with a super cool English Bulldog (sad part is she was selling for 3400.00) and a super hyper Fox Terrier. After we had lunch she totally crashed and slept on the way to the airport, through check in, while we waited for the plane, and woke up from a 2 hour nap as we sat down and took off. Go figure! She was a champ though through that 4 hour flight. Then we found a play place during our layover and she slept the entire 1 1/2 flight after that and all through the night after and she was even better on the flights out so we were really lucky with that! Alli had so much fun playing with the girls. It's gotta be boring here at home with only mom! Guess they'll just have to come visit soon!! And so to console ourselves (seriously we miss you guys lots and lots it was great playing!) we'll head out for a couple days so now we are just busy trying to get all ready again! Thanks for the fun visit!