Day 1 - LVL

Our first family vacation started Friday morning. We got up had breakfast, and at an easy pace we left. We had to drop Clementine off at Matt's mom and dads. Then we were on the road around 11:30. Lost Valley Lake (LVL) here we come!!!


Our first stop was at the St. Louis Miniature Museum (remember the passes we won at trivia night). Matt was not very excited about this, but I kinda was. Those are the kinda things you do on vacations, plus it was free.
They had everything at this museum you can imagine, from a nice little family home to the Playboy penthouse...it was interesting.
Then we were on the road. The only other stop was the Wal-Mart in Union. We stop there every trip to get our groceries and what ever else we may need. Well half way there, I realized the bag I packed to keep up front full of all Ry's stuff, and well, I forgot to pack diapers. Well by the time we got there it was 2:30 and he had not had a diaper change since we left the house that morning. You know I can only remember so much, but the diapers was a huge thing. The pack we brought with us was at the bottom in the back of the car so of course we could not get to those, so we had to buy more diapers.


We left Wal-Mart at 4, and we got to LVL around 5 and we got checked in. Which took forever since I had to get a member card that only lasts till March and costs $25.


We went and found our camper, we requested the camper either have a good grassy area or a playground near by. Well , we got the one that had a playground right across the street, yeah right? After we walked down our steep driveway (which required us to put the parking brake on) we would cross the street then there was another huge hill, that you were better off rolling down. Then when you got to the bottom of the hill you had a ditch you had to jump over. Then you had to go down another hill then you were at the playground right across the street!


We unpacked everything and Ryan was just screaming with excitement he just didn't know what to do with himself. He loved the great outdoors. Even though he had to stay on the concrete pad because the grassy area was maybe a 4x4 area with the metal fire pit next to it, and if he would fall, crack goes the noggin, plus the grass was above his knees. But he also couldn't get off the other side because then he would roll down the driveway, across the street, down the hill, bump over the ditch, down the other hill, then he would be at the playground. We did have the lake across the street as well, which was pretty.


Matt grilled up some hamburgers, while I made the side dishes. And we ate dinner outside, it was wonderful. We were having our nice little relaxing vacation...then the night came!!! We brought his pack n' play for his bed and figured from previous stays it would fit with no problem, well we were wrong. There was absolutely no room for it, so which meant Ryan was sleeping with us every night..yeah! Ryan got really tired around 8:30, so naturally I tried to lay him down, well with it being an adult bed I had to lay down with him till he fell asleep, yeah right, he was not having that. So I figured we would drive around and put him to sleep. Which worked wonderfully, he fell asleep by the time I got the emergency brake off and scooted down the driveway. We drove around for about 15 minutes then we went back to the camper and laid him down for his 10-12 hour night time ritual. Ahh, such a sweet baby he was so tired from a long day. Matt and I decided to play UNO, which he won.


10:30 p.m.- The crying started, Ryan had woke up... he never wakes up. So once again I laid down with him to comfort him and get him back to sleep, nope wasn't working either. So, we got all buckled up again and we toured the campground once again. He was fast asleep so we went back and I decided to stay in bed with him, because maybe he woke up last time and got scared because we weren't there in a new place. So we both went to sleep. Poor Matt had to pull out the bench bed to sleep because the 3 of us were not fitting in bed comfortably, and we were not taking the chance to wake him again.


2:00 a.m.- I awoke to crying again. I could not get him settle down. Matt got up with us and the two of us made a human wall so he could not fall out of the bed. After awhile, he was not crying, he was wide awake, ready to play. He was opening the curtains outside, falling all over us, and just laughing, he thought all of this was so funny. Well to say the least we did not. Yes, it was cute though. At one point in time, Matt had fallen asleep and I was looking out the window and I kept seeing these bird like creatures fly by...all I could think was, they weren't bats, were they? Well I ignored it, I did not want to think about bats outside my camper, I just got got the image of the spider I just killed on the wall out of my head. Well, Matt woke up, it is now 4:00 and I have decided to take Ryan for another ride. We went outside, and sure enough there were the bats. I was happy Matt saw them too, this way I was not crazy, and someone would believe me. There they were flying around the huge street light we had in our front yard, giving us way to much light. So I hurried into the car and off we went. I had to drive safe because at night is when all he animals come out to play. Then I was coming down the street and since we had this bright light and were up on this huge hill we really stuck out, and were on show the entire time. I could see Matt from down the street waving the hot dog pokers at the bats. Apparently the bats came so close he could see the veins in their wings. I drove around for a bit more, we went inside and we all three stayed asleep till morning.