Christmas Chaos!

This is what my life has boiled down to. Complete chaos! And they said that this stay at home wife stuff would be easy!

Saturday night was the holiday party for Trav's company down at the Black Bear Casino. The casino is about 2 hours south of us, so we decided to stay the night and make a weekend of it. Fun right? Oh yea....

Now normally I am the best packer on the planet. I never bring to much, but I think of everything and I rarely forget anything. I guess I am never allowed to say this ever, ever again. We left around 2 pm so that we'd get there around 4 and have time to relax and get ready before cocktails at 5:30. So we get everything loaded in the car and get on our way right on time. No problem! Until we were about 20 minutes away when I realized that I had absolutely none of my jewelery. Not even my wedding rings! It took us 10 minutes of going back and forth on whether we should turn around before Travis finally did and we went back for my jewelery.

I get everything, we get back on the road and we think "ok, now we're good." Again, 1/2 hour away and I think "oh shoot! We forgot the camera!" But I told Travis to just keep going, we'll just have to do without (hence why there are no pictures in this post!). We continue on our way, making good time, until we're about 1/2 hour from the casino. I look at Travis and ask "where did you put my dress? It was on a hanger." He turns to me, eyes wide in horror, and says "I didn't touch your dress. It was hanging with my dress shirt. I thought you had them!"

So now we have no dress clothes. Wonderful! Luckily Travis had packed his dress pants, shoes, and a nicer sweater in our overnight bag. But all I had were jeans, a sweatshirt, sweater, pajamas and shiny silver shoes. Now those shoes can make just about any outfit look good, but pajamas are a far stretch! Ok, new game plan, we can handle this! I tell Travis to just go to the Wal-Mart in Duluth, which is only about 20 minutes out of our way. I'll go in and grab something quick. Well, of course, since I'm a girl, this can't really be as easy as I think it is. After 20 minutes I find a shirt that will work with my jeans and shiny shoes and we finally get out of there.

We actually managed to be only 15 minutes late, and no one really noticed at all. Phew! So after some meet and greet and cocktails, we finally sit down to dinner. At a table with only one other couple. Who, we find out much later, are only dating and are something of a new item. Awkward! Luckily we were able to push through with some small talk about old jobs and whatnot. Now it's time to gamble!

Trav's boss was very generous and gave everyone $15 to spend in the casino, or however you wanted to spend it. I spent mine on booze and slots. I can still feel the burning sensation of it being ripped out of my hands so quickly. Travis, ever the cautious gambler, spent his a little slower but lost his in an equally brilliant blaze of glory. We decided we'd have much better luck on the dance floor, so off we went to boogey down in the casino lounge.

What we didn't know was that it was AARP night in the lounge. So we danced along with a bunch of blue haired 70 something's, trying not to knock anyone over and cause a broken hip. We managed pretty well, but I was starting to get pretty warm so I thought a walk around the casino would make me feel better. Boy was I wrong! It was pretty much all downhill from here. I started feeling horrible and ended up passed out in bed, leaving Travis to his own devises for the rest of the night. He went back down to the casino until 4:30 in the morning, but surprisingly didn't spend or lose any money. Alright hubby!

So the next morning we decided to skip breakfast and just head home. This process was complicated by the fact that I kept getting sick on regular 1/2 hour intervals. Now I know what you're thinking: "oh you wimp, you can handle a hangover!" This was no hang over. I don't know who poisoned my food, but something I ate had me sick all day long. The only thing different that Travis and I ate was the cooked pineapple in the ham plate, so we've decided that it was the pineapple. After my third rousing round of toilet hugging, we decided to make a break for it. We got safely down to the lobby and out to the car. We're doing great! We get on the highway, stop to buy a bottle of water, and get back on the highway - no problems. I'm feeling much better! Until all of a sudden - oh boy, pull over! Lucky us, Travis brought the plastic baggy from the hotel ice bucket. Win!

We managed to get home safely with only having to pull over one more time, and I holed up for the rest of the day at home in bed. Monday morning I woke up feeling fine, almost all better even. What have we learned from our weekend? Always make a list and follow it closely, double check said list 50 times, and don't eat the cooked pineapple if you don't know how long it's been sitting there. So you can commence your berating now, I hope you get stitches from laughing so hard at me.

Monday was spent buying all the necessary ingredients and supplies for making cookies. Today was cookie day. I sit here, on the couch, barely able to move, as the cookies have declared me their evil nemesis and they have definitely won. I'm glad that baking only happens once a year in this house!

Happy Holidays kids! Only 9 more days until the chaos is over!