Puppies and Driving Home

Star

Kingsley meeting Ninja

Kingsley meeting Ninja

Ninja-Star

Ninja

It's now time to get back to work...well for some members of my family. Though I still have plenty of free time, my family's vacation to Missouri is over. We arrived back in Michigan last night after a long and grueling drive. We were originally supposed to get home at 8:30 PM (at least according to the GPS), but due to some difficulties, we didn't arrive until around 11:00 PM. But more about that later; right now, let's recap the last few days of our vacation. I think last time I posted, I left off on our last day. Well, the last day was a nice one - we went swimming, on one last boat ride, and then ate dinner at a restaurant in town called B&J's, where I got a delicious burger and tried fried green beans for the first time (I don't know about you, but fried vegetables seem to defeat the purpose of having something healthy). By the time we did all that, we didn't leave to 6 PM or later, so we didn't arrive at my grandparent's house near Kansas City until relatively late at night. My Aunt "Rose" and "oldest uncle's" new Westie puppies, Max and Gus, were sleeping when we got there, but they woke up when Kingsley nudged his way into the room the were in. Of course, now that they were awake, we had to introduce them to Kingsley. My dad suggested that we do it one puppy at a time, as to not overwhelm Kingsley, and eventually, Kingsley adjusted to not being in the center of attention (though he occasionally got jealous). For the record, I have to say that the puppies are extremely cute, though a bit rambunctious, especially Max. After unpacking everything, I played around with them for an hour or so, and then went to bed (which I had to share with my sister and mom - not fun).

The next morning, I was awoken by the high pitched barking of the puppies, and after tossing around a bit, I decided to get up. My mom and Aunt "Rose" had left earlier to get donuts from LaMar's Donuts, which was twenty miles or so away, I believe. Why they had to go so far to get donuts, when they could have gotten perfectly good ones closer to home, I don't know, but I will say that the donuts were delicious. I had two sprinkle donuts, as well as pieces from some of the others they had gotten. There was no set plan about when we were going to leave for St. Louis, though we joked that we would leave as soon it was lunchtime, so that we could go and eat at Hiboy's, a local fast food restaurant, and one of the few exceptions I make to my no-fast food rule. In essence, that is exactly what we did, though more for the reason that that was when we finished packing up than anything else. As promised, we stopped at Hiboy's on the way out, and, though it may seem superfluous to say it, the food was very good.

The ride to St. Louis was pretty uneventful, but what happened afterwards wasn't. When we arrived, Kingsley met another set of puppies, this time pugs. Their names are Ninja and Star (do you see a theme?), and per Aunt "Rose's" request, I have posted pictures of them. Though we stopped in St. Louis on the way down, they hadn't gotten the dogs by then, so this was the first time we met them. Like Gus and Max, Ninja and Star were full of energy and rarely sat still. It was some feat to take a good picture of them. After meeting the dogs and unpacking, it was revealed that my aunt had two extra tickets to that night's Cardinals' game, and wondered if any of us wanted to go. Both my brother and I wanted to, and in a few minutes we were on our way. But don't feel sorry for the rest of my family; they met up with my Grandpa (my dad's dad) at the Wildhorse Grill, where they ate dinner. My dad rarely sees his dad, so they had a good time. But back to the Cardinal's game. Let me tell you, the seats that we had were amazing. They were one section away from the Away dugout, and about 5 or so rows from the field itself. Pretty nice for a game, I wasn't even expecting to go to (or knew about, for that matter) a few hours ago. It even had its own private concession stand and bathrooms. All I can say is that it was quite a bit nicer than the nosebleed seats my family had at the last baseball game we attended, watching the Tigers at Comerica Park. Nearer to the end of the game, my brother, cousin, and I went searching for cotton candy, and in the process, got our pictures taken twice for the Cardinal's website. We found this kind of strange, seeing as only my cousin was wearing Cardinal's clothing, and were joking that if another person came up to us, we would say something along the lines of "no paparazzi, please." The game was pretty exciting, too - especially in the last two innings, where the Cardinals tied and then won. I feel sorry for the people who left in the 7th inning, when they were down by 3. Luckily, there were no extra innings, so we got home at a relatively reasonable time.

And now on to our trip back to Michigan, which was certainly longer than 10 hours. First, there was a traffic jam just before we got off to eat lunch in Plainfield, Indiana. I'm not joking, it took us thirty minutes or more to travel 2 miles. When we finally got there, we had trouble finding the Panera Bread, because we had never eaten there before. But the worst was after we left from there. My parents planned on going one way so they could bypass some construction or something like that, but it turns out that the exit they were planning to get on was closed. So, we decided to follow the GPS and see where it took us. Well, we got quite a nice drive through the nice and not so nice parts of Indianapolis. The route was also confusing because this road we were driving on eventually turned into the highway, which was hard to see on the map. Needless to say, everyone was a bit cranky by the time we got out of that mess. We finally got back on track, but it took quite a bit longer than we expected it would. The vacation was a lot of fun, but now we are back to reality, where you can't swim every day or read books for hours on end. The only thing I wish we would have done is stop at Ted Drewes' in St. Louis, but it's probably for the best that we didn't, seeing as I have eaten so much ice cream and desserts during this vacation. Right now, I kind of need to detox. It's also probably high time that I start reading the rest of my summer reading novels. So, until my next exciting adventure.