Shenanigans

As I mentioned back in January, Mommy B and I are planning on taking more frequent, "smaller" trips this year so that we can include the kiddos and not break the bank. Well, we took our first one this past weekend... only the kids weren't invited. Don't worry, we have plenty of fun planned for them in the coming months. We decided to book a one-night stay in Savannah, Georgia with my younger sister (Aunt Bacon) and her boyfriend Gentry. The two of them have only been dating for a few months so we wanted to take the opportunity to get to know him a little better while taking a short break from real life. And the fact that I have a new job waiting in the wings gave us all the more reason to celebrate.

Saturday morning rolled around and I decided it would be in everyone's best interest to take the kids to SkyZone - or as they call it, "the jumpy place" - to get some energy out before turning them over to my parents for the rest of the day and night. So I packed them up in the car and took them to the indoor trampoline park while Mommy B did our weekly grocery run and packed an overnight bag for the kiddos. The kids loved jumping around with each other and with some of the other kids - but they mostly just ran around as fast as they could without tripping and falling. After everyone was good and tired, we headed home just in time to meet Tatsy at our house who then scooped up the kids and took them over to their house.

For the first time in a long time, the house was eerily quiet without any kids around yet both of us still there. I'm sure the dog was very confused. Once Bacon and Gentry showed up, we piled into her car and headed down the coast. The car ride was filled with good conversation and plenty of laughs - a staple in our family.

We arrived to clouds and some rain with the temperature hovering right around 50 in Savannah. We checked into our hotel room and immediately went searching for late lunch - food, another staple in our family. We basically walked into the first bar/grill we could find and ordered some adult beverages right away. While our food was being prepared, we loosely mapped out our evening's festivities. We had signed up for a haunted pub-crawl that began at 8pm, so we had about five hours to kill beforehand. The consensus was to walk around for a bit right after lunch then head back to the hotel to take it easy for a little bit before we ventured out for the evening. After a mediocre lunch of bar food and a somewhat rude server (he was basically running this dive bar by himself on a Saturday), we walked down River Street and took in a few of the shops and ordered some drinks to go. For anyone that hasn't been to Savannah, "to go" means the bartender will pour your drink into a plastic cup that you can then walk around the streets with. Kind of like Las Vegas, minus the casinos... and desert. We made our way back to the hotel and crashed on the beds for a bit to rest up for the evening's events. But it basically turned into a grown-up giggle-fest. We all took turns trading jokes and making each other laugh - even though Mommy B and Bacon were trying their darnedest to take short naps. This even included Gentry playing a song on his phone from inside the bathroom. Welcome to the family.

I decided that a nap wasn't going to happen, so I got up and started getting ready. Eventually the rest of the group joined me while I played music and sipped a Red Bull. Before we left Charleston and knowing about Savannah's open-container laws, Mommy B had stopped at Walmart and purchased four plastic "yard" cups with shamrocks on the bottom for us to use that evening. At first, I gave her a hard time because I thought everyone was going to make fun of us for celebrating St. Patrick's Day too early... little did I know that those cups would end up being the joke of the night. We finished getting ready, grabbed our cups and headed out the door. We took a picture by our room number so in the event things got really out of hand, we would at least have visual evidence of what room we were staying in. Lessons learned from Grandma C...

The meeting spot for the pub crawl was only a block away from our hotel, so we decided that we would head out a little early and get some drinks next door. While still in the lobby of the hotel, we were asked by two separate groups where we acquired our St. Patty's Day cups. We laughed off their curiosity and told them they could find them at Walmart for $3 each. On our way out the door, I had an idea - each time someone asked us where we got our cups we should take turns making up the craziest story about where to find them, and at the end of the night we vote on who had the best "fake" story. It was unanimously decided that's how the night would go.

We met up with our pub-crawl group and began our drunken trek around Savannah. The stories the guide told were great, but I really wish we could have actually gone into some of the haunted buildings he spoke to us about. Just standing outside being told about how "haunted" the building was didn't really do it much justice. However, with our large yard cups filled to the brim and plenty of inside jokes to go around, we had a great time. In almost every bar we went into, someone had to ask about our cups. We would tell them that we found them in this off-the-map, hole in the wall bar called Shenanigans. It was "like 10 blocks over and 3 blocks up... pretty far." We didn't even know if there was a bar in Savannah with that name, but we made it sound legit to everyone who asked. At one point during the pub crawl, a drunk guy walked up to us and interrupted our guide's ghost story to inquire about the cups. Now that we had the group's full attention, I told him the same story we'd told the rest and he bought it without even questioning us. I turned back to the group and told them that I had just completely made up that story, and everyone got a good laugh out of it. Even the tour guide applauded our quick-wit and had the group raise their cups to give us a "Cheers!"

We eventually made our way to the Wild Wings where Gentry was able to meet up with some friends he knew from his home state of South Dakota. As we walked in the door, a woman at a nearby table again inquired about our cups. Gentry blurted out "Shenanigans!" as we walked past her. The woman immediately pulled out her smart phone to access the maps feature and said, "Shenanigans, got it!" We hadn't eaten any dinner yet, so we decided that some late night munchies were in order. As we started plowing through our food, the in-house DJ started playing all our favorite hits from the 90's... all mixed together that had us in an endless nostalgic trance. We took a few videos of ourselves singing along to the songs that we hadn't heard in almost 20 years, yet still somehow remembered the words to. Well, most of the words.

That basically capped off our evening as it was nearing midnight. We tried going up the street to a karaoke bar because we had been promised that Gentry knows how to carry a tune. However, it was crowded with too many other white folks who thought they could sing. So after watching all the moms sing "Let It Go" in unison and about half an hour of waiting, we decided to just head back to the hotel. We made it back safe and sound with all of our belongings, which was a good sign. Once back at the room, we realized that we didn't have any bottled water. So Bacon and Gentry went down to the lobby and returned about 10 minutes later with about 8 bottles of water in their arms. They said, "Well, no one was around at first so we just grabbed these out of an open case that was there. We went to leave money on the counter for them, but then an employee showed up and said, 'You know those are complimentary, right?' So we took our money and came back up. Here ya go." Shenanigans.

We woke up the next morning not that much worse for wear, and treated ourselves to the complimentary breakfast in the lobby. Bacon was amazed to find an automatic pancake maker there, where all she had to do was push a button and a minute later two pancakes plopped out onto a waiting plate. It's the little things in life. After stuffing ourselves, we packed everything up and drove two hours back to Charleston in the rain. The kiddos were napping when we arrived back at the homestead, and Tatsy told us they were so good for them the entire time. We had received a few pictures from her throughout the course of the evening/morning showing us what a good time they were having without us. It's such a good feeling to know that we can both be away from them from time to time and trust they are being well-behaved. The more they are exposed to situations like that, the better off they'll be in the future if we decide to go away for longer periods of time. And of course, a big THANK YOU to my parents who volunteered to watch them for us while we spent some time acting like kids ourselves.