Tomorrow after church, we are headed on a week-long trip that's half business, half pleasure.
We will drive to Sevierville, TN tomorrow afternoon to spend three nights visiting my grandparents in the beautiful Smoky Mountains. Graeme will get his first "camping" experience. I put it in quotes because we will be staying in an air-conditioned cabin with all of the comforts of home plus a hot tub. No complaints here.
He will get some camping exposure like fires and cooking outdoors. My parents will be there too, so we are also in for some major Graeme-spoiling. He will be with four grandparents and he's everyone's first grandchild/great-grandchild.
On Wednesday afternoon, we will leave Penny with Mimi and Grandy (she will hitch a ride home to Raleigh with them at the end of the week), and the three of us will head on to Murfreesboro, TN for Aaron's coaching network retreat. It's about a three hour drive from where my grandparents live, but it puts us in Central Time. I'm thinking that since we will only be there two nights, I will keep Graeme on Eastern Time. We'll see how it goes.
Aaron is a coach for INFUSE this time, and we will be staying in the home of our lovely hosts. We were going to stay until Saturday morning and then make the almost 10-hour drive (add 3-4 hours extra considering baby) all in one day. I started to think about this last week and realized we were basically crazy for considering this.
Aaron will have to be at Journey all day on Sunday next week, and a 15-hour-drive the day before sounded like a nightmare.
I began to think through a new plan, and it took me and some friends to convince Aaron that this was a much better idea...
We are going to leave Murfreesboro Friday night at Graeme's bedtime and make it to Asheville. There is a conference center right off of 40 called Ridgecrest that gives pastors a discounted rate to stay at their hotel (we have been there before with students). Our friend Joe reminded us of this, and it will save us like $100 bucks by not having to get a hotel room somewhere else. We will spend the night there, and then be able to drive the remaining five hours home on Saturday at a much more leisurely pace.
This plan makes me feel much less dread for our return trip. Graeme does great in the car, but we have experienced him reaching his breaking point, and it's not fun. He would be miserable in his carseat for 10 hours. Who wouldn't be?!
So, that's what we're up to this next week.
This past week has been busy tying up things to leave town. Work, family time, and sleep pretty much sums up our life right now. There isn't much time for anything extracurricular right now. We will all be glad for a little vacation away from Raleigh.
Graeme is amazing, per usual. I cannot believe that he will be five months old next Saturday. He's just one month away from being a half a year old. Crazy.
He is sleeping so wonderfully lately. We don't hear a peep out of him until just before 7am. Our goal as soon as we get home from TN and get settled again is to wean him of his dream feed. Part of me wonders if he would even miss it right now, but I'm scared to drop it cold turkey! I have made it earlier and decreased the amount, so he's been going from 9:30pm-7:00am with no waking up. We don't want to make a drastic change on him before we drag him from place to place to place next week, so we'll wait to worry with that later.
He still loves his oatmeal that he gets during two of his daytime feedings. Another goal for when we get back is to introduce some other foods. Not sure what yet. Not sure how exactly either. I want to make my own baby food. I bought a book to read. We'll see how that goes too.
Well, I hope to get something posted during our trip. Here's a picture of this cutie, because a blog post isn't as good without at least one picture of Graeme...
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