Memorial Day and the Spider

I know, I know. You are just dying to see how far I have gotten on the cross stitch projects, right? Sadly, I have only made progress on one of them, and not that much. I am going to do better this week, I swear!

Before I get into the whole weekend story, I wanted you to see who I met on the back deck a few nights ago. Yes, the Godzilla of spiders! He survived a healthy dose of Windex! He is out there, Baltimorians. Watch out!

We went to Dan's parents for the long weekend. What a weekend. It was a long drive (seems like forever when you are sitting on a broken tailbone). Our first stop was 6 hours into the trip in Charleston, WV - not to be confused with the beautiful city of Charleston, SC - this was not nearly as picturesque! We stayed at the Holiday Inn by the river - they were kind enough to give us a big room on the end and provided a crib for the Abster. She did not like it. It was a nice enough crib, and the linens were clean, but I think she felt like it was a jail...

The next day, we picked up Sissy (in Charleston, where she stays with her mom at her grandparent's house) and headed on to Wellington, Ohio. Husbands out there, let me give you some advice, do NOT fall asleep whilst the wife is trying to get to a house that she has not been to in over a year on roads she does not know with two children in the backseat and pedophile truck drivers nearby (That is a whole other story, and one best left out of the blog. Suffice it to say that they are out there and taking a gander at the little ones whenever they can). It is not a good game plan.

Anyhow, after about an hour of backtracking (and so 6 more hours on the road on top of the 6 hours the day before), we finally made it to Grandma and Grandpa's house in Wellington. All of us were glad to get out of the car. They have a beautiful eight acre plot of land and, to the delight of all little girls out there, ponies! They have three ponies, a horse, and three cats. This was heaven on earth for Sissy. Saturday afternoon they hosted a big barbecue and had 40 people over. Sissy and Abster got to ride Rascal and fun was had by all. Abster also got to meet her uncles and a whole bunch of other people, so that was great too. Abster really enjoyed meeting Uncle Ronnie and just could not stop grinning at him and trying to touch him. He had been looking forward to meeting her, too, and it was a pretty special moment when they locked eyes.

By the way, I don't want any truck drivers out there to take offense at what I said earlier. But there is one of you who cruises the highways of the midwest looking at little girls while they are vulnerable and sleeping. You know who you are, and I do too!