Life of a Salesman

Some might say that Alixa is accident prone. Others may say that she is clumsy, or doesn’t watch where she is walking/driving. I’ll let you make your own judgments. A couple weeks ago she was driving the Carlotta (the new Santa Fe) around near our house when she ran over some sort of puddle. Unfortunately, that puddle happened to consist of yellow road paint, and she splattered it all over the driver’s side of the car. So they had to take it in to get detailed at the hefty pricetag of $350. The reimbursement from VDOT is in the works, but now that the government has announced its spending freeze, I am not sure when we might get that money back. For the rest of the post, I’ll let Alixa tell you about her vacationing.





Since the craft fair was so hectic and so much time was spent preparing for it, I decided that I needed a break and the next weekend Jenna and I took off for Delaware. I invited Jarom to come, but he was still working the night shift at that point and was sleeping all day so he said to go without him. Turns out he stopped working the night shift the day after we left and actually had the whole weekend off. He ended up golfing and playing paintball while we were away. I am pretty sure he just wanted some alone time but he claims he didn’t know that was going to happen. Whatever. One of my excuses to go up was that Annie needed to find a house, and I am an excellent house shopper, so I was going to go help her look at houses. Well, that didn’t actually happen, but we had a lot of fun and I am really glad we went up.

We started our trip on Friday and left Richmond around 10 am. We would have left the previous night, but Annie called and said her kids were puking and that I should give it another day, if I came at all. Well, I wasn’t about to let some flu symptoms ruin my weekend, so I waited until Friday, packed up the car and left. I was so proud of myself for driving the whole way by myself. I had never done that before because I get really sleepy when I drive and Jenna isn’t much for coherent conversation, but I did it and we made it in one piece. We only stopped once for lunch at Panera at the busiest shopping center in the world. After that we hit traffic and it took forever. So the trip ended up taking about 6 hours with stops and all, but Jenna was really good and only whined a little.



When we got there we started having fun immediately! Annie and Jamie are such good hosts. They let us eat their food and play with their toys. Jamie even bought us doughnuts! Jenna still only eats baby food and spaghetti noodles so I mostly enjoyed the good food by myself. Jenna did LOVE playing with her cousins though. She thought Hailey was awesome and had lots of fun jumping on the bed with her. I know she liked her because she kept calling her “Nenna” (Kenna) and that term is reserved for only the best of friends! There was one incident where Hailey stole the toy Jenna was playing with and after having to give it back picked up whatever toy she could find and threw it at Jenna as if to say “Fine, take them all!” But they all narrowly missed her head. Hailey has a surprisingly good arm! Other than that they got along really well. Jenna also tried to play with Luke, but he loves his mom too much and wouldn’t leave Annie’s side long enough to play. So Jenna played in Adri’s and Juliet’s room. They have awesome toys! Her favorite toy was the doll stroller that she pushed around the upstairs landing for at least 3 hours a day. She would put a purse on each arm, put a doll in the stroller and push and push. It was pretty cute. She became very independent on this trip. One minute she would be in the kitchen with me and then next she would be headed up the stairs to the girls’ bedroom to get the toys. Then she would play up there until I came to check on her. It was really fun to see her be so independent. While the kiddos played, the moms chatted. It was great to catch up with Annie and Jamie. Annie and I even managed to sneak out and do some shopping while Jason watched the napping kids. We also had dinner at Gramma K’s house on Sunday night and ate some delicious chicken tacos. Kimmie and her family came and we chatted all evening.



We were supposed to leave on Monday so I could be back to watch Kenna on Tuesday, but Nate called and said he had the day off and he could watch Kenna, so we stayed another day. We went up to Lancaster, PA on Monday and hung out with Amanda Boyd, a friend of mine from back in my BYU days. We ate at the Olive Garden and did some outlet shopping. Jenna had lots of fun with her daughter too. Her name is Addison and she is almost three. She called Jenna “Jenny” and it was super cute. They ran all over the Gap together while we found some Christmas dresses. Once again, a successful shopping trip!

Tuesday we finally left because we missed Jarom and Jenna really missed Kenna. Jenna was so exhausted from the fun weekend that she slept nearly the entire way home. We didn’t even have to stop. We had a fantastic time up in Delaware and will probably make more weekend trips up there in the near future. It is so awesome that Jenna has so many cousins her age to play with!