A Week Up North

North of Dallas, at least. North Texas. Nothing crazy over here as I get more and more pregnant and I'm convinced I could go into labor any day now.

(Unlikely.)

One of the benefits of being a stay at home mom with family within driving distance is being able to pack up the necessities and go spend a week at said family's house without too much consideration. L was going to have a busy week at work and I needed to step away from our house because I could not. stop. myself. from. NESTING!!!! and honestly I just needed to chill out a little bit.

Towards the end of last week, we kept promising Zoe that we were going to the zoo that weekend! I don't know if she really understood what that meant but I was pretty excited that the Cameron Park Zoo was a good halfway point to meet my parents and do an exchange of persons. My mom was excited too because I had to get my love of zoos from somewhere. Anyways, the weekend came and pretty much all of Texas had crazy weather and flooding to the point where as we approached Waco I was running through multiple prayers in my head and regretting our decision to meet that day.

Needless to say, we didn't make it to the zoo but we did eat lunch at Zoe's Kitchen which I've always wanted to go to. Zoe was not impressed.

I went into the week thinking I'd read a few books and take some extra naps but then I decided to bring my nesting spirit to my parents' house, God bless them. I didn't go too crazy, and really just went through and tried to Kon Mari some of my old stuff but got stuck on the sentimental notes and ticket stubs and class journals from high school and gave up. (L and I read through some of my old journal entries this past weekend and had some good laughs at my 9th grade self who thought I knew way better than the government (I questioned why GW even needed an inauguration in the first place...so much money wasted!) and also the Catholic church (love was just different in Jesus' time than now; the Church doesn't get it!).

{Miscellaneous phone pictures of Z because why not}

I got some personal time to do solo damage at Ikea which is always more enjoyable when they first open up during the week on a nice day as opposed to the last time we went to the Houston Ikea on a Saturday afternoon during a downpour. We had some nice outings to lunch and other stores and I was seriously tempted into needing about 100 new things for baby Lily when we stepped into Buy Buy Baby so congratulations store, your marketing works. We also tried out a music class at their local library for Zoe. It took a few songs for her to warm up to everyone and when she finally did, she twirled too hard, falling straight into a chair leg which led to our graceful/screaming exit and a black eye on the same eye she literally always falls on.

{Nice shiner baby g!}

The best part was having 2-4 extra eyes and hands on Zoe every hour of the day. My mom was able to chase after her in ways that I just can't at the moment. She also has the patience of a saint and let Zoe unpack and repack her purse thousands of times, as well as flip through hundreds of pictures of her every time Zoe requested "more baby!" which was every few seconds. Let's just say Zoe's love tank was full every single day with all that individualized attention unlike here at home where I'm always trying to multitask. It will be really interesting to see how she reacts when Lily comes home from the hospital. I've been told the first few weeks she'll be fine and it'll new and exciting until she realizes this darn baby isn't going home and that she has to share all of her attention.

{My heart is melting}

The REAL best part though was when Landon came on Saturday. Pre-marriage, I loved going "home" to my parents' and even during those college years found it hard to go back to school. Home was just so comfortable. As sappy as the song might be, now home really is wherever we're together -but preferably our house. Being physically apart from your husband for a week is hard. To all those who spend weeks and months on the reg apart, I salute you. I don't think I had laughed as hard as I did when we had a date night on Saturday just going down the street to Braum's and eating ice cream together.

Yesterday ended up being a beautiful day out and we were actually able to go to the zoo just like we had been promising and promising. Even though I dropped the ball and took my time packing and eating lunch only to remember the zoo was closing at 5 as we pulled into the parking lot at 4. We sped walked through and I think Zoe was satisfied with the bears, jaguars, and capybaras we saw.

It's good to be home now, but I'm grateful for the week "away" :)