Cottage

What a delightful week! The weather didn't wholly cooperate, but we had a fantastic time with Fred and Val regardless. The cottage is beautiful, lake sturgeon is spectacular, and having no phones, no cable, and no internet made for such a peaceful time! I'm pretty sure I could've sat there, looked at the water, and just thought for hours. And while it may have been cool, gray, and cloudy for a good chuck of the time that we were there - it sure made for great running. By myself. Ah, the simple pleasures ;) And while I was off running, sans jogging stroller, Mallory got to spend some quality time with Grandpa.

Speaking of Mallory and Grandpa, he let her "drive" the Jetta nearly everyday, and boy what a treat that was! I mean there was the radio to play with, hazard lights, the horn, turn signals, windshield wipers. How can a girl go wrong? Driving was definitely one of her favorite parts of the trip :) She also added some new words to her vocabulary - cheese/keys, Drew, bye-bye, and the biggest surprise of all: thank you. When she gets her paws on something she shouldn't have, I always say "thank you" when I take it away from her. So when she wanted another bite (and another and another) of Val's chocolate ice cream cone, she pointed at it and said thank you. So cute! Sounds like "day que".

Mallory also started giving kisses! She puts her lips together - most of the time - and points her mouth in your general direction. She says "mmmmm", like the first half a smooch then skips the "whah" part :) And as if she didn't start doing enough new things this week, Mallory went back to 2 regular naps a day, finally gave up the need for white-noise while she's sleeping, chose a comfort item (blanket) and started using her glo-worm 1) to lull herself to sleep in the evening and 2) like a snooze alarm in the morning. It's very funny to watch her hit the button then snuggle back down to sleep for a bit longer.

We were also treated to a visit from Allie, Trey, Liam, and Brendan - much to everyone's delight. Drew was particularly psyched to have some kids to play with. Mallory on the other hand, was a bit peeved at being left out of all the fun. Sometimes it's no fun to be the littlest kid!

So, not all was grand. On our way to the cottage, American airlines pulled a doozy on us. First of all, we'd gotten up at the crack of dawn to catch a 7am flight from here to Chicago. Everything was fine there, but our connection was delayed from Chicago to Canada. When we did finally get to board there was some sort of issue with Mallory's ticket. We literally delayed the whole plane from leaving. And the gate agent was such a royal be-atch I was shaking with rage by the time we actually got on board. She told us we'd booked our awards tickets wrong for a lap child and owed taxes, etc. blah blah blah. Kyle was like you can't pay tax on $0 and the woman's response was that you can pay tax on people and for some reason a lap child costs extra. She then proceeded to "let" us on the plane but made sure we knew that she was documenting everything in the system so we'd get charged "double" on the way back to the states. In fact, she then came on the plane to let us know again how it was all our fault for booking the tickets wrong and not her/American Airlines' problem. Well, it's a good thing she did document everything, because the customer service rep we later spoke with was able to corroborate our story with the notes in the system and assured us that the woman was 100% in the wrong - there's no place online to designate a lap child when you book rewards tickets. So, thanks to her extraordinarily rude behavior and great note taking skills, Maria S. will be facing disciplinary action. Take that and stick it!