The plan was to drive as far as we could and to get a dumpy hotel room and then drive the rest of the way in the morning to be on the beach by 9am. You can sleep when you're dead, right? Well, knowing myself, I warned my sister that we might try to do the trip in one night and could she please stay awake to let us in. Sure enough, we got two hours out and I was feeling good so we went for it. We arrived around midnight and had been texting my sister with no response. To make a long story short, we ended up sleeping for a couple hours in the garage of the house until my dad was awake to let us in.
Courtney and Christen came down for the first weekend of our trip. It was so good to see them as I hadn't seen them in so long. On Saturday night, we invited all the adults to come over for some grown up beverages. Here's a picture of most of the ladies.
One of the deals of the trip was that my mom didn't want to be cooking and cleaning the entire time. This was her vacation too. So each couple had a night to cook. On my dad's night, he made his famous ceasar salad and lobster. Here's a picture of the amazing feast we had.
On Facebook, I always see the Dadi girls posting about Duck Donuts. This must be something relatively new b/c I had never heard of them in all my years at Duck. However, I was willing to be swayed and take a visit. So Chris and I preordered donuts for the whole gang and got up early to go pick them up. They make them fresh and put the toppings on right in front of you! Delicious! Thanks for the recommendation!
For Chris' and my night of cooking, we decided to bring a little bit of Chris' hometown recipes to the beach. We made Chicago style hot dogs with tomato salads (one of Chris' personal recipes). I was a little worried that my family wouldn't even try these concoctions since we are a ketchup kind of family. However, they surprised me by being very adventurous and trying them and even going back for seconds. With the exception of Jeff, who I found out, hates tomotoes. Whoops!
We left the beach mid afternoon on Thursday and made our way up to Nova to spend some needed time at the Hole with Heather, Kristen, and Amanda. In the morning, we got up super early to go pick up the Rallys and head back to Indy. Although Kim offered to help with the driving, I am too much of a control freak to actually let that happen and I drove the whole way. Sorry Kim! We basically spent the weekend dining at all the best restaurants in Indy (Perugini's, Flapjacks, Steak N Shake, and Jersey Mikes), playing board games, playing with Hank, and of course, going to the Brickyard. The race was good, not continuously hot, Jimmie Johnson didn't win. It was pretty empty. I hate to say it, but I'm losing interesting NASCAR pretty quickly. Boo. But here is a super cute picture of me and Chris. I know ya'll can't get enough of those!
So after 10 days and over 2,000 miles, I'm ready for a vacation from my vacation. My throat has been sore this week and I'm exhausted. I hope this trip didn't make me sick. Next year, I hope we just go to the beach and that's it!
