Columbia, SC

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving and start to December!!! We traveled to visit family over the holiday weekend and once we got home, we were in full party planning mode. The whole week was spent prepping cleaning and decoration making! (I'll recap our party next... trying desperately to get caught up before the holiday madness)

Thanksgiving morning, we all got up to finish packing and head straight to the airport for our flight to Charleston, SC. I was hoping that the flight would be fairly empty, but it was full with only 5 seats to spare. Lucky for me, we were able to all sit together since Logan no longer sleeps during flights and takes a lot of work to entertain. It is so so so much easier to have Geoff sitting right next to me than it was on my flights to Cincinnati all by myself. It was also so weird to be able to have my phone on the whole flight and made me realize that a lot has changed since I have been out on leave. (Reality is starting to set in that I'm going back to work in a few short weeks... eeek)

My Dad and my brother Kyle were there to meet us when we landed and we all piled in the car for the drive to Columbia. My Mom and Dad were very thoughtful and brought a car seat & stroller with them so we were able to travel very light.

That night we went to a restaurant that was serving up some Thanksgiving grub! Even though we had already made our family Turkey feast (and eaten left overs)... I couldn't pass up another helping. It was really good. Geoff went a different route and had scallops. Boy oh boy were they perfect! We ended off the night with some apple pie and headed home to put Logan to bed.

This trip, we were all staying at Kyle and his girlfriend Amanda's two bedroom apartment. Learning from the disaster of room sharing with Logan back in Cincinnati, we came up with a fun solution. We stuck the pack and play in the closet of the guestroom (where Geoff and I were staying). He was able to have his own little space, with white noise, his lovey and blanket and we were able to sleep in our room with NO problems!!! Woo hoo.

The next few days were filled with sight seeing, tours of Amanda's work, eating (and more eating) and hanging out. It was so so nice for us all to be together for once and it made me remember once more how much I wish that we all lived closer to each other. What we saw of Columbia seemed really nice and I will be excited to come back and explore more!

It was great to see Logan interact with everyone. The last time Kyle saw him was back in March, and Amanda had yet to meet him. He is at a GREAT stage right now where he is sleeping well (knock on everything wood) and so much fun to play with. He pretty much is in a great mood 90% of the time and it's great for everyone to get to see this fun time in our lives.

The last night, we were lucky enough to all have tickets to the SC vs. Clemson game. I strapped Logan in the Boba and we hit up a tailgate for an hour before the game. It was a much different experience to be tailgating with a baby vs. what I did in college. I guess we all underestimated the chaos that college football games are... (esp big games such as this one). I must have pushed all of that out of my mind and while we fought the crowds to get in, I highly regretted not passing and watching the game from their apartment. We ended up sitting outside for the first 10 minutes of the game and then heading to our seats. Logan wasn't really sure about the crowd and spent the majority of the first half with his head snuggled into my shoulder and taking peeks at the crowd, lights and field.

For the second half of the game, Geoff wore Logan with our Rosk (which is a blanket that attaches to the the carrier) while we walked around and got hot chocolate. Logan fell asleep (since it was bed time) and we finished out the game standing in a section where we had a great view of the field with no crazy crowds around us. It was really fun, but I felt slightly bad for putting Logan in a situation where he was clearly overstimulated. We are lucky that he is such a trooper and has a great attitude even when we make mistakes. This whole first year of parenting is such a learning experience and I will be the first to admit that I am not perfect, and have made mistakes along the way. Someone once told me that it's ok because at this age, they wont remember... which I guess is a blessing. :)

Anyways, we had a wonderful time and I can't wait to have everyone come to visit us once the weather up north is a little warmer.

I know this is a very delayed recap, but I really hope everyone is enjoying the holidays! Cheers.