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Friday, May 04, 2007

Old Kentucky

In my last post, I intentionally left out an important piece of information. We were not in a bathroom in a hotel in Charleston, West Virginia, four hours away from our destination, as planned. Rather we were in Fairmont, West Virginia, six hours away from our destination. That fact was left out in case my brother-in-law or future sister-in-law, in the midst of anxious last minute wedding planning, took a break to go on-line, realized that we were at risk for missing the bachelor / bachelorette parties and had to deal with one more piece of stress.

While we may have protected them from stress, we knew what we had to do. Basically, in order to get to the hotel in time for the festivities, we coudn't afford to make any more stops, so we abandoned the Music Together and Laurie Berkner CDs that had sustained my older son (OS) for hours the day before and broke out the good stuff - the Curious George CDs. That held us over for most of our blitz across West Virginia and into Kentucky, but in the end our need to keep OS pacified forced us to reveal the final secret of our rented minivan- it has a DVD player in it. We quickly learned that it is easy to get video out of it, but we were surprised that a Telebubbies episode suddenly appeared to be paired with a country music soundtrack, aka the radio. After much frustration, and an acceptance that OS was just going to have to watch his DVDs without sound (my younger son (YS) is still rear facing) the DVD miraculously started working. It was smooth sailing for the next 45 minutes until we got here. So while were happy that we went over 14 of the 15 hours of travel without the DVD, now OS knows it exists and there will probably be a lot of whining for it on the way back (unless we give in).

Kentucky is absolutely beautiful! Last night my husband, the Big Giraffe. attended the bachelor party and I went to the bachelorrette party. "Grammy" as OS started calling my mother-in-law instead of "grandpa," watched the boys for us. My event was a sex toy party complete with a penis cake. I have to say that I felt totally underdressed compared to the fine Southern ladies here. I also have to say that it seems like we talk more about sex out East and are less embarrassed by it, but I was impressed with the openess of the women at the bachelorrette party as well as the williness to go into the bathroom and test out different creams and such. I have been to two such parties in MA (different company though) and people seemed shy about touching the toys. And, at least to the best of my knowledge, no one applied any creams to any personal areas.

The food here has been fantastic. I was disappointed not to have had a mint julep yet, but I had fantastic country ham which I have never had before (apparently it's big out here for the major holidays), something called jam cake which is great, a very tasty potato salad, an egg breakfast with "all in" hash browns including cheese and a lot of veggies and sausage and gravy, and something called a Kentucky Brown or hot brown which is a delicious turkey and ham sandwich with a cheesy fondue like sauce on it and topped with bacon. (If you are imagining something out of a typical deli, then you have no idea how fantastic this is!) I was very proud that before I left for KY I went down a jean size. Let's just say it's a good thing I didn't get rid of my old jeans.

The rehearsal and rehearsal dinner were today and OS did very well. He even wore his polo shirt with gasp, buttons! and khakis. (Yes there was an initial meltdown, but he recovered and kept the shirt on for well over 6 hours. ) Keep your fingers crossed for tomorrow, when we try to graduate to a full tux!

A. Elliott's Lesson Learned: Stuff in Kentucky looks beautiful and tastes fantastic!

Labels: Travel

posted by Alex Elliot @ 9:39 PM 2 comments

2 Comments:

At 5/05/2007 10:41 AM, Suzanne said…

I'm glad you arrived safely and that things are going well. Good luck with OS tomorrow, and best wishes to the happy couple!
At 5/07/2007 8:36 PM, soccer mom in denial said…

NO MINT JULIP!?! What's up with these people?

O.k. seriously - A SEX PARTY! And I wasn't invited. Seriously Ms. FFFP, you need to start including me to these things.

Good luck on the drive back with the DVD player. We broke down and used it for most of our trip to and from another part of this fine country. But hey, it was Blue's Clues and Laurie Berkner!

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Name:	Alex Elliot
Home:	MA, United States
About Me:	Professional Mom of two cats, a dog, an ant farm, and oh yeah...two boys: a 5 year old and a 3 year old. Also found in my house is my husband who is known on this blog as The Big Giraffe.
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