Spring Break 2016: Day 4, 5, 6

I’m still recapping my Omaha trip. If you missed Day 1, 2, 3 click here.

Tuesday started day 4 of vacation. Reese and I talked about Starbucks and he said he didn’t know what to order there, but he knew he wanted something. Helllllooooo you’re talking to the queen of coffee. So I asked what he liked…you know, hot or cold, chocolatey or vanilla, and we took a trip to Starbucks. I got my iced coffee and he enjoyed his Vanilla Latte. Now that wasn’t too hard, was it? 😉

As soon as we got back to the house, my aunt and I hit the road for my grandpa’s house in Iowa.

Around 1:00 or so, I wanted a salad. A grilled chicken salad. While we were driving my aunt mentioned something about wanting an ice-cream cone, so we ended up stopping at a dairy queen and I was pleasantly surprised by how good their salad was! And get this…Tuesday, March 15th happened to be FREE CONE DAY. What the what?! We all won!

We got to grandpa’s right around 3:00 in time for a Dr. Phil episode. I spread out on the couch eating grapes while gramps sat in his beloved chair and we watched all the crazy play out on Phil’s show.

Later that night we went to dinner at a local Tavern and while it was taco night, I ended up with a grilled tenderloin. All I got was a tiny piece of meat and I was still hungry so when we got home…

…I made some popcorn and we all munched while watching updates on the presidential race. Gramps enjoyed some leftover birthday cake.

Ohhhhhhh how I love this guy. I was so happy we got to come down and see him!

On Wednesday we woke up and were lazy all morning, so come lunch time my aunt made grandpa a lasagna and I laughed because it looked SO GROSS. Word to the wise…don’t buy Stouffer’s lasagna if you want to eat something that actually looks yummy. If you don’t care, then by all means!

Later that afternoon, we did what gramps does during the afternoon. He sat in his chair and read the paper while I continued on in Candace Cameron Bure’s book. With more of the news in the background of course.

That night my cousin Dani (who’s basically the older sister I never had) and her husband, and their little boy Tommy came to eat. So we went back to the same tavern for dinner…because when in small town Iowa, you have limited options. This time I got a grilled chicken breast and baked potato.

We came home and I got a picture with grandpa. And it’s a shame I don’t do something with my hair because ew.

I posted this picture on Instagram. FOLLOW ME @mollymiddleton01. Tommy pooped his pants right before this picture and it was hilarious. Nonetheless, I still got a picture with him (and gramps in the background) so it’s my new favorite.

I had to grab another selfie with grandpa while I could.

We hung out, chatted and then all went to bed.

Thursday morning we woke up and grandpa had his cereal. We said our goodbyes as we were going back to Omaha that day.

We stopped by my other aunt and uncle’s house to say goodbye and my aunt gave me this drink to try. I’m a fan. Have you had it before?!

And then we stopped at our Dairy Queen again. And here’s the deal with that.

My aunt did something to her knee to where she could barely walk, so she wore a knee brace down. When we went into the DQ on Tuesday the lady behind the counter asked if she could pray for her. She said yes and we left. Well, the next day my aunt woke up feeling  100% better and said we were going back to her! So we did. And she had her pray for some other stuff going on in her life. And it was so refreshing to see!

Thank goodness for people like Bev from DQ.

When we got back, I quickly showered and headed over to my uncle’s house for some corned beef and cabbage because #stpaddy’sday

And then I went out with one of my other cousin’s and her parents for happy hour.

We came back and they had this appetizer made. I found it on Pinterest and am totally going to re-create it soon! Sooooo good!

My uncle has his famous drink that he makes and when we got home he got to it!

I had one of his drinks and a drink that my cousin made. Trust me…you won’t have to worry about an alcohol deficiency when in the presence of my family!

My cousin and my aunt just cooking away and spoiling me.

Steaks, kale salad, and sautéed mushrooms and onions. DELICIOUS. I want it again!!

We sat around the table for a couple hours after dinner talking, laughing, telling stories, and all of that. I ended up going home around midnight and went straight to sleep. All of these events were wearing me out!! But it was so much fun!

Tomorrow we’ll be wrapping up and coming home. Come back to see! 🙂

Window Furniture Shopping?

Mother and I decided that one afternoon we would fake re-do the downstairs because we have had the same furniture for oh…about my whole life. So randomly one afternoon we hopped in the car and drove here:

Ahhhhh, I smell good lookin’ furniture. Our main goal was to do the kitchen and our living room. We started with a new kitchen table. We decided we needed a circular table because our rectangle one was hard to put food in the center when you have six plates around it. So we found this one:

But the problem was that when we have family in town for Christmas and other holidays we need to be able to extend the table and this didn’t extend. So then we found this one. We really liked it and especially that bench on one side of it. Look at the texture of the table in the right picture. We kept this one in mind although it wasn’t circular.

  

The next table we found was pretty cool. It was a circular table and the “leaf” for extension goes on the outside of the table. We thought it was super clever, but even with the leaf it only fit about 6 people. We still kept it in mind.

The last kitchen table that we saw is called the “pizza table” can you guess why?? Cause the extensions look like a pizza! You pull the pizza slice out and then pull another thing up to create the extension. Pretty brilliant, but the only problem we had with it was the issue that food would get stuck in the cracks and be hard to clean, because it is the kitchen table and frequently used.

No more kitchen tables, but then we started to re-do the patio outside. My parents were thinking about having some couples over for drinks on the patio so we thought we would check out the tables and furniture while we were there. This one I particularly liked. It’s big enough to fit 6 people around for snacks and drinks. And the seats are high enough up that you don’t have to fall into your chair.

I liked this fire pit and the chairs with it. I don’t know why, just ’cause I guess.

Look what I found while walking around: A LEOPARD LOVE SEAT! Sold.

And I liked these two things for wall decor:

And for the BEST part. New family room furniture. We found some others but this was my favorite so this was the only one I took a picture of. This love seat/ottoman/chair/whatever has my heart. It was so comfy that I almost fell asleep there in the middle of the store. Order it for my bedroom, I will use it as a bed! It was THAT awesome.

And of course the matching couch. I talked my mom into it because you can make the long side shorter and the short side longer. I half-convinced her that it matched our window treatments, but she wasn’t buying it. Figuratively and literally. When it’s time for a new family room, Molly knows how she wants to decorate it!

We were at SAMs Club the other day and came across this kitchen table. I really liked the chairs and the legs of the table, however it had the grooves that would make for hard cleaning and the chairs probably would fit taller/larger people that well. But still, we liked it. Just not for our house.

 And you can’t of course forget this pretty piece of furniture that we found at Costco while doing our grocery shopping. Look an almost 6 foot teen can fit on this thing. It’s a good size for any room in the house and a good price too.