Another Great Weekend

I feel pretty cheesy about it, but I had an excellent weekend. It was a lot of socializing, and a lot of fun. I don't know about you, but I'm pretty "meh" on socializing in general. The idea of meeting up with people, and then talking to them and dealing with things can be overwhelming. It's funny, because when I was younger, going out with my friends was THE BEST. You know, hanging out with your buds every day after school, talking on the phone for hours. Friends were pretty much the best part of life.

Then, I grew up. I started dating and turned into one of those lame chicks that hangs out with her boyfriend most of the time, and then I had school and work and blah blah blah. Overwhelmed by life, with little time to do what I wanted, I just kind of fell out of the habit of socializing and got really bad at it. Like I forgot how to have a conversation. The internet always gives me the feeling that I'm having social interactions, so I just let that make up for the fact that I didn't spend much time with other people. There are always periods of strong friendships throughout my life (we had a great group of friends at the Grand Canyon we would hang out with all the time) and then friend droughts (the Death Valley years) but the worst has been since we moved home. A big part of moving home was supposed to be having our friends and family around, and while we have been enjoying that to a degree, it's not been to a high degree.

There's something about being an adult, and especially after marriage (or moving in together) and even more so after having kids, that kind of drains your desire to go places and do things. How lame is that? You're finally old enough to have the freedom and finances to go do stuff and you're too lazy and boring to it! This realization was the catalyst of my "do something every weekend this spring and summer" initiative. I miss having friends and things to do. I let myself get overwhelmed with responsibilities and miss out on fun. I let the drudgery of getting ready and wearing pants and a bra stop me from leaving my house. But no more!

This weekend fell into a fun place. My "do something" idea was to go to the children's museum in Grand Rapids. And that didn't even happen.

Friday night, my sister and her fiance ended up coming over and we had a little cook out/hang out kind of night. It was nice to spend time with them and just kind of BS about life in general. I really love that I live close enough to them that we can all get together at the drop of a hat like that.

Saturday, we got up and started our trip up to Grand Rapids. As we got to the Michigan border, Ramona said, "Oh no!" and then threw up all over herself. Poor kid. It was all chunky milk and super gross. Luckily, Joe's parents just happen to live off the next exit, so we went to their house to clean up and recover.

That left us with the task of deciding whether she was sick and we needed to go home, or it was one of her occasional morning vomits and she would be fine. Seeing as we had a nearly three hour drive ahead of us, we really didn't want to make the wrong choice. So, we gave her some time, she drank some water and ate some Cheerios and seemed fine. We decided to go for it. And it was the right decision (yay!).

When we got there I went out to eat with some blogger friends at a hibachi place and Ramona and Joe went to the mall and rode the carousel. After hanging out and talking for a couple hours, Joe picked me up and we decided not to go to the children's museum because they would be closing soon. Instead, we drove out to Holland and walked around the Tulip Festival. We got an insane funnel cake with peanut butter and chocolate sauce and just walked around looking at things. We got dinner at New Holland Brewing and then went home.

I was exhausted and Ramona was, too, so we went to bed. Joe went out to his friend's birthday party and came back later. The next day was a pretty typical Sunday- I actually got up in time for church, we went to the park for a walk and the playground for Ramona. She's been playing with other kids much more now, and it's reassuring to see her try to make friends. Whenever she's approached by child about her size, she says, "Hi, I'm Ramona. That's my Fishie. It's nice to meet you!" It doesn't work that well, but that seems to be more because kids her size are not very good at introducing themselves. Or communicating in general.

We went home and my friend Lindsey called, who hadn't talked to in awhile. It was nice to talk about stuff and catch up, and capped off my more social-than-usual weekend.