Friday, September 23, 2011

The Houseguest: Camber's mom

Our Houseguest came. And behaved herself very well, thank you.


Something about having my mom come transformed me into a little girl wanting to play show and tell, "See mom! There's our parking spot! And our gas station! And look at that tree outside our window!" Etc. It's as if few things in my surroundings held any meaning for me until time to share them with another person. 


Another advantage of houseguests is the excuse they give to visit things that only tourists ought to visit. Like the Amish Colonies. And the apple orchards. Fun places, but we just kept forgetting to go to them. Until my mom came. 


Yet another perk: my mom lives life with great zeal. She is the kind of person that will continue to have girls night with young married girls in their 20's. And grown men in their 20's and 30's will sit down across from her chair at work and confess everything from woes with women to their latest surgery (and show her their scars). Even my husband has been known to call her up and chat for an hour. Without me around. She can find humor in a traffic jam and joy in a $1 bacon cheeseburger. Any road trip with her is guaranteed to bring great excitement and noteworthy memories.


So when we went to Nauvoo (just the two of us) she proclaimed the old men that led the tours adorable and loved the horses and the temple and the pioneer dresses and bawled at the Carthage Jail tour and became BFF with our waitress at the hotel buffet and laughed at the pancake machine that produced ridiculously tiny pancakes at breakfast. And I enjoyed them all the more with her.


The ridiculously tiny pancakes


One night we went to dinner downtown and settled in...and realized the food was waaayy more expensive than we'd planned. I voted to leave. Isaac thought that was awkward. We already had water, after all. Then, because my mom is always up to adventure we decided to split an entree three ways. Not just any entree. A burrito. So that's what we did, and we loved the restaurant all the more for our funny memory of a three-way burrito.


Also at some point one of us mentioned crepes and that led directly to making plans for an epic crepe night. Which we carried out. We made probably 2 dozen crepes for...three people. We ate crepes for dinner and for dessert as well as pre-dinner snack and bedtime carb loading. 


And then she left.


And life got a little more boring.
At Carthage Jail in Illinois where the Prophet Joseph Smith was martyred.
This picture was taken post-meltdown. Mom is recovering here.
These champs took us on a tour of the countryside.
This is one of about 16 pictures we took with the horses.

This is a placard with a quotation from my 4th-great grandmother.
Apparently she wasn't the docile, subservient type. 

4 comments:

  1. Camber, I don't think I've ever met your mom, but I can definitely see that you have a lot of her in you. This is such a fun post - glad you had a great time with her while she visited!!

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  2. Cool grandma! (and your mom seems pretty cool too)

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  3. Man...when I read the word "crepes"... I had an instant craving! Yum. I love crepes. And those tiny pancakes are hilarious!

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  4. I wish I could have gone on a roadtrip with your mom to Nauvoo. And you too, of course! I hope you guys had fun.

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