Pancakes & Road Trips — Stolen By a Bohlen

Jan 25

Jan 25 Pancakes & Road Trips

SIDENOTE: Some of these posts may be a little out of order, while I try to catch up from all of the holiday craziness! ❤️️

I remember being a kid and sitting in front of the TV impatiently waiting for our school district's name to scroll across the screen to signal a snow day. I can also remember the pure agony of being the only school NOT having a snow day! 😂 There had to be at least 3 feet of snow on the ground to get a snow day back then. But my, oh my! How glorious it was when we actually got one! This past weekend we kept hearing all kinds of forecasts for snow. 1-3 inches, 4-6 inches, even 15 inches! Sometimes I wonder why we even look at the weather. In Illinois, it is what it is...and typically, it's never what you hoped for! 😂 We didn't get pounded with a ton of overall snow, but the wind gusts were extreme!

It was the perfect day to just.stay.home. 😍

We spent most of the day playing with Waylin and basically eating the entire pantry like it was the end of the world. 😂 Does anyone else do that? I mean, the first to go is the cookies and then by the end of the day we're basically eating boxed soup and that one really old can of vegetables that lives in the back of the shelf. 😜

Sunday morning, Ben spent the entire morning trying to dig us out. I kept going out to check on him to make sure he hadn't froze to death. On one of my "life safety checks" (😂), I asked him why he was hell bent on clearing the drive. He looked up at me with snow covered all over him and said one word:

P A N C A K E S.

And just like that, I understood. 😂

I thought FOR SURE we would be able to get into the Original House of Pancakes without any troubles. Surely, no one would be silly enough to leave their house after the blizzard on Saturday!? Sadly, I was wrong! We had a 25 minute wait. Ben cringed. That is a long time to entertain Waylin in a packed room of strangers. Leave it to mama to entertain! 💪

Waylin loves to pull things out of my purse. I have learned to keep my tampons in a different pocket! 😂 She pulled out an old deck of cards that I always keep in the off chance that someone wants to play Rummy (literally, the only card game I know!). She really enjoyed pulling cards out of the deck! I was really shocked that she knew how to hold the cards properly. We named each color/suit as she pulled. A couple sitting nearby was smiling about it and even commented on how good her "hand" was! 🃏

After we got our pancake fix, Ben decided we were going on a road trip! I mean, if you thought we were crazy for digging ourselves out of 5 foot snow dunes, now we were full blown mental ward for driving to another state after a blizzard! Off to Indiana we went!

Ben found a van for sale that he wanted to take a look at. LET ME BE CLEAR! This was a work van, not a mini van! There's no way in H E L L you will see me driving one of those! 🙅‍♀️ He has flirted with the idea of starting a side business for awhile now. While we still have a lot of questions to answer before anything gets started, the purchase of a van would be the first step. Waylin and I hung out in the car and watched cartoons on my phone while Ben test drove the van.

We decided to go get a sandwich to think it over at Culver's in Lafayette, Indiana. Waylin stole some of my food and played with the straws. She wanted me to put multiple straws in my lemonade, but couldn't quite figure out how to slurp it up! 😂

Ben spent a lot of time on the phone talking to his brother about the van. Meanwhile, Waylin and I explored the restaurant. She walked around and made everyone smile that she passed. We probably did 20+ laps around the restaurant, to the ice cream freezer, to the counter, and back again. The sweetest employee came up to us and asked if she would like a toy named "Scoopie." She got a little shy, but definitely wanted Scoopie. It was such a nice gesture by the employee, and it still makes me smile a week later!