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Since Emily is Slacking OFF

I will tell you that she and I are going on a trip this weekend. I may have mentioned this a few days ago.  Here’s why this trip is going to be awesome:

1) I totally barfed this morning, despite being 23 weeks pregnant AND taking a Zofran

2) Emily ran 7 miles this morning ’cause she is INSANE so she is going to be chipper and full of energy.

3) The drive is 7 hours long WITHOUT stops

4) We are taking our 4.5 kids

5) We are not taking our husbands

Ok, here is why it will REALLY be fun!

1) Chevy loaned us a sweet-a$$ Traverse to drive!  It has enough room to fit us, all our kids, and all our crap!  We are stoked!

2) Emily and I really do love each other

3) Our 85-year-old grandmother will be there

4) My mom will be there to help us watch the kids

5) Go shortie, it’s my birfday!

6) I get to force Emily to watch my favorite movies with me

7) We expect some serious cousin bonding to occur betwixt our children

8) When I come home I will have beautiful new kitchen cabinets from Granite Transformations!!!! (countertops will be done on Tuesday, the day after I get home!)

9) I am totally going to make Emily play Yahtzee with me.

10) Emily is making me a birthday cake!  And you all know what an awesome cook she is!

We can’t wait to tell you all how great our trip was!  See ya when we get back, and tune in Monday, Labor Day, for another great Gymboree giveaway!

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And THAT is How We Roll. Or Coast.

We had a wee bit of car trouble on our vacation to Virginia.  As in, our transmission on our beloved Toyota station wagon totally died. (Hey, it’s a 1992, give the car some credit!)  Did I mention we were kind of, ok, TOTALLY on a mountain at the time? On the Blue Ridge Parkway, specifically.  It’s a *smidge* windy and narrow! Not ideal.  Luckily we were following my sister-in-law and were able to get her attention and we pulled off at an overlook.  By some miracle, we were able to get the car back up to my parent’s house, which is even further up the mountain, and up a VERY steep driveway.  This driveway as a matter of fact:

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Let’s just give God all the credit for that one! I was Me of Little Faith. I don’t exactly, um, *do well* in these situations so I was pretty much a nervous wreck by the time we made it back up to my folks’  house.

So, then, we had to figure out what to DO.  Bobby is a mechanic, and could certainly put a new transmission in the car if he were not seven hours away from his shop and tools. It would have cost us a small fortune to get it fixed there in Virginia if we could even find a shop that could do it before Sunday when we needed to leave to come home (this was Thursday.)  So, Bobby started looking around for towing companies, figuring we could get it towed home to Ohio for much less than the cost of getting in fixed in Virginia.  He finally found a company (thanks to a recommendation from his boss at his dealership here in Ohio) that would do it for a reasonable price, a price that would still make you want to crap your pants, but much better than what it could have been.

But of course, to get the car picked up, we’d have to get it back down the mountain.

EEP!

Once we get out of the steep gravel-road forest which is my parent’s “neighborhood” (and I use that term very loosely), and actually got onto the main mountain PAVED downhill road, that would be ok. I mean, a car doesn’t need a working transmission to go DOWN a mountain.  Just good brakes.  So my dad and Bobby loaded up the next morning and I followed with my Italian Tuxedo-wearing brother in his mini-van.

The car made it a very short distance before it died the first time.  Then another short distance.  Then another. And…another.  Four times Bobby was able to get it going again and then FINALLY we made it to the main road.

And Bobby COASTED that baby FOUR MILES down a mountain.

And then we left it in a thrift store parking lot to wait for the transport truck.

And Bobby and I bought my niece and nephew smoothies at an outdoor sandwich place called “Frank’s for the Memories” while my dad and my brother went to the GUN STORE.

All in all, just a typical day in our family vacation!

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The Origins of the Italian Tuxedo

This is my brother, Andy.

Perhaps you may remember him from my stories of the torture I experienced at his hands as a child, or from the fact that I keep him well-stocked with Charmin and lady deodorant.

I keep telling him, he is getting pretty famous among the two of you my many readers.

I just returned from a family vacation at my parent’s house in Virginia, where I spent the week with Bobby and the kids, my folks, and my brother Andy, his lovely wife of 15 years, Sarah, and their four kiddos.  It was, as expected, great fun.  Partly because when my family is together, we never cease to crack each other up.  And we actually enjoy being together!

But back to Andy.

On this trip, I saw something I had never seen before, a sight that was both humorous and slightly perplexing: my brother Andy wearing a “wife-beater” t-shirt.  Or, as he calls it, his “Italian Tuxedo”.  Now, we are not Italian in the least (we are actually mostly BRIAR), but the men in my family are pretty darn hairy (not on their heads, of course, but everywhere else, right, Uncle Paul?), so Andy looks like he could be Italian crossed with Greek crossed with BEAR.  Dude has got body hair.  As a matter of fact, two of his three-year-old “Cubbies” in his Awana class at church have commented on his outstanding fuzziness, one telling him he looked like a monkey, and the other rubbing his arm and saying very generously, “Mr. Brads, I like your fur!”

Out of the mouths of babes.

But I digress.

I had no idea my brother was a fan of the genre of the wife-beater, and one late night last week we got to discussing how and when he had come to love those paper-thin tees that so nicely showcase his voluminous body hair.  He thought about it for a second and said: “I know when I started wearing them.  It was when I got my “Concealed Carry” license and I needed something to cover my gun, so I started wearing the wife-beaters underneath my t-shirts so I could tuck my holster in my pants and then my t-shirt would cover my gun.”

Well. Makes sense, right?

After I finished laughing, crying, and gasping for breath, I came up for air and said, “Wait a minute.  Let me get this straight.  You started wearing wife-beaters so it would be more comfortable for you to carry around your GUN?”

“Well, yeah.”

I love my hairy, gun-toting, school-teaching, lady deodorant-wearing brother. And you really can’t argue with that logic in regards to his donning of the Italian Tuxedo.  I mean, really, you can’t have your holster chafing against your skin when you’re packing. Everyone knows that!

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