Vacation continued…
So after my unsuccessful trip to the beach, I went to the mall to fight boredom. DH wasn’t coming home for a few hours and I thought about going to see “New Moon” but none of the theatre times worked out right. I bought my first maternity clothes during this shopping trip prompted by boredom. I picked up a tank top and a dress, both on sale at Mother Maternity. They had a little pillow belly to put on in the dressing room to visual what you would look like with a belly. I won’t be able to wear the two items for a while because it is way too cold still. I’m wondering if I should even buy any winter maternity clothes. I’m not really going to buy anything until I actually need them in an effort to save money. Also, I was thinking I might look on Craigslist. You can get good collections of maternity clothes for cheap on there. Like 10-15 articles of clothing for $50, which is pretty good.

Christmas and Christmas Eve went off without a hitch. Christmas Eve, we went over my parents house during the day to have lunch and decorate a gingerbread house with my Aunt Louise. My Aunt Louise is mentally challenged and has the mental capacity of an eight-year old. She lives in a group home. Ever since my Grandmother passed away over 3 ½ years ago, it has been a struggle of where she would live. My Grandmother left a rather a large inheritance (in the millions) to my uncles and my aunt. Also, they have a house they bought in the 1950s that is a very valuable piece of property in Florida worth millions of dollars. The house is not worth much, but the land is gulf-front property amongst million dollar homes. She wanted my aunt to be taken care of since she can’t take care of herself. My parents tried to advocate for her to try to live by herself with some assistance that would come every day. This is what she wanted. However, my two uncles were completely obstinate and refused to even try this. They wanted to put her in a group home that they would use her inheritance to build and then she would live for free. It was the cheaper option because it was a one-time investment. After a court battle and much debate, my uncles won and my aunt moved in the group home, where she has been miserable ever since. It’s a sad situation that I really can’t do anything about. My Dad is estranged from my uncles and I don’t know what to think.

I wish they had acted in my Aunt’s best interest, but I really don’t want to cut them out of my life. Out of all my extended family, I was the closest with my two uncles and my aunts and my cousins on my Dad’s side. I keep in touch with my Aunt Barbara the most through e-mail because she is not involved in this whole thing. I wish that things were different and I could still be close with them but our relationship is strained. They’ve never met DH, although I’ve talked about him a lot to them. I told them we were expecting and they were of course thrilled. I am thankful that I have DH’s family, because I love how close they are and I miss that extended family feeling. My Mom’s side is spread all over the country and we have never really been that close with them due to sheer geographic distance.

We split Christmas Day with DH’s family and my family. It was nice at my parent’s place, much more relaxing than DH’s house, no dogs or cranky old men running around. We had a nice Christmas dinner. I did realize something though that I would never tell my Mom. I always loved my Mom’s cooking growing up. But now I realize I love DH’s cooking way more. We like to make things from scratch and make sure there are good flavors integrated in. My mom comes from the Midwest style of cooking where you keep things cheap, filling, and tasty. It’s completely understandable that she would cook like this considering she grew up rather poor with 8 brothers and sisters. We like being adventurous with our flavors and taking the extra time, especially for big meals to make sure something tastes spectacular.

So one big bonus of driving to Florida was the ability to take bulky things back with us. We received a lot of presents that if we had flown we would have been SOL, considering we had to pay $15 just to check one bag. We packed up the truck with lots of random stuff: my cleaned and preserved wedding dress, a used car seat, some random baby stuff, and lots of presents. Luckily, no rain for predicted for the drive home so we didn’t have to use a tarp. We left Saturday morning and reached Charleston around 4:30ish. We had booked a room earlier in the week, because we didn’t feel like driving the whole way back and wanted to make a little mini-trip out of our trip. We stayed the night at a Radisson near the airport because it was like $80. I had been to Charleston once when I was younger with my parents. We ate dinner at a place we had seen on the Travel Channel that had good Southern cooking called The Hominy Grill. It was a really yummy, authentic and not too pricey dinner. Then we wondered around the chilly, empty streets trying to find a nice place to listen to some jazz. Charleston is really a nice quaint little town with beautiful historic houses and lovely alleyways. I wish we could have seen it during the daytime. We found an Italian restaurant and settled in. I was a cheap date the whole night, ordering soda water and lime or juice. I drove back to the hotel around 10ish and we had some long overdue hotel sex…

The rest of the week has passed uneventfully. DH has been ill and it has been freezing so we’ve been staying indoors. I told myself I was going to go to yoga class yesterday to try out my new yoga mat, but I just couldn’t inspire myself. We’ve been so lazy that we’ve been getting into bed around 8:30-9PM to get warm and just watching tv until we’re too tired to stay up. New couches will be coming on Saturday and I can hardly wait! They will be comfy and wonderful and it is very exciting. We’ve never had nice couches before so it really is a step up. We’re getting a sleeper sofa, loveseat, and an armchair all for $1260! I got them to knock off $240 from $1500 after I called and wanted them to cancel my order so I could order them online for much less than what we paid. Instead they said they would honor the online price.

This new years I will be spending solo I think because DH is still sick and isn't up for going to my friend Emily's place as we had planned. He'll probably be asleep by midnight so there is not point in me staying home with him. Sad, but c'est la vie...