We dropped Norah off to her mom after a fun afternoon at the La Porte County Fair. Norah loves getting her face painted, even though she usually scratches or washes the paint off within an hour, so we let her go for broke and get this:
Then we packed up the car with pretty much everything Jeff and Holly could need to watch Levi (including a stroller, baby bath, exersaucer, bottles, formula, food, snacks, toys, books, clothes,Tylenol and Orajel, swim diapers, regular diapers, wipes, blankets, and carseat), Levi himself, and Pippa, because she was heading to the farm for the week, too. Upon reaching Jeff and Holly's we realized that we'd forgotten one item: the pack and play. For those of you without children, this is essential. It's like a travel crib. For a kid who can crawl being contained during sleep time is a must. I already felt guilty about disrupting his routine and making him sleep in a strange place, but to forget the actual bed? Fail. (To be fair, packing the pack and play was Zach's job. I had packed and set EVERYTHING else by the front door for him to load and had asked him to grab the pack and play out of the basement storage room. Being the control-freak that I am, however, I still took the blame for not double-checking my mental list before we took off.) Luckily, Holly wanted Dairy Queen, which required a trip into town anyway, so we left them our house key and took off. We stopped at Panera for dinner before continuing to the Midway Park, Ride, and Fly lot. Upon arriving at Midway around 9:30 p.m. we were told that 1) you cannot check into a Southwest flight more than 4 hours before the flight and 2) the counter is closed during the night and doesn't reopen until 4 a.m. This meant we had 6 1/2 hours to kill in the departures area. No carpet, no soft chairs, no real food. It was my idea to fend for ourselves in the airport and find adventures, but I imagined sleeping and eating as a part of said adventures. Before I could start stressing out, we heard a live band playing patriotic music and headed toward it. Turns out a flight containing nearly 100 WWII Navy vets was landing and countless Patriot Riders and family members had turned up with flags to welcome them in. We stood near the Chicago Fire Department bagpipe band and watched as each veteran was wheeled by. A handful walked, and one adorable man did a little jig as he passed us. It was incredibly moving--the music, the crowds applauding, and those who had served our country 50 years ago combined for a magical experience. I teared up as Zach took pictures and clapped. It was a wonderful way to spend our first hour as airport campers.
We spent the rest of the night alternating reading, cat-napping, walking around, and random yoga-ing (that was my 2:30 contribution.) Our flght went smoothly and we headed to downtown Denver for a few hours before meeting up with Zach's friend Dan for the wedding rehearsal. We'd decided to try as many new places as we could, so our first mission was to find a non-Starbucks coffee shop. Then we wandered toward the courthouse and city-center where we stumbled upon something we've never seen in northwest Indiana--food trucks! Each Tuesday and Thursday around 40-50 specialty food trucks head to the center for a couple of hours. People head over during their lunch breaks and try things like Argentinian BBQ, crock pot meals, fancy food on sticks, pulled pork, and ice cream (to name only a few!) We chose the Denver Cupcake Truck and snagged their specialty that week, bacon-chocolate, as well as a lemon curd cupcake for me. The salty-sweet combo of former was quite good, but it was really heavy on the chocolate. The lemon cupcake was quite possibly the best cupcake I have ever had. That fest is just one of the things that made Zach and I wish we could move to Denver.
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| A fogged-lens view of some of the food trucks in downtown Denver |
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