Babymoon Trilogy: Columbus

DH and I took last week off and decided to take a mini babymoon vacation. We headed up to Columbus for a few days to do some shopping and just get away for a little bit. We didn't take a single picture. (Sorry!)

We left early on Monday morning. We drove my sister back up to OSU since she had been home for our party. Since she had to work at 9:00, we left at 6:45. This is earlier than I leave for work but somehow the idea of getting up early to start a vacation isn't nearly as bad as the idea of getting up to go to work. We got to Columbus right around 9:00 and I called the hotel to see what time we could check-in. The check-in time is officially 3:00 but they said if the room was ready, they would let us check in any time. We decided to grab some breakfast first. We drove around until we saw a First Watch and we just decided to eat there. It was very yummy. We were contemplating what we should do next and decided it would be best if we could get into our room and then go from there. I called the hotel again to see if the room would be ready. (We "fought" for probably 20 minutes about who would call the hotel and I guess I lost. I just wanted to specify that this was all me... :P). We would told it would be no problem to get our room. We drive up to our hotel....twice. The first time Garmin was really confused and she kept recalculated which confused us even though we could see the hotel. We were also confused because we couldn't figure out where to park. It looked like they had Valet parking (which we definitely didn't want) or a garage but we thought you had to pay for the garage. We thought maybe you would get your parking validated at the hotel or something. After driving around the block a few hundred times, we pulled into the Valet area to ask where we should park. The valet kindly informs us that valet parking is the only parking available. Oh, and you have to pay an additional $21 a night for it. Thanks for that mention, Hotwire. We grumbled about this a little bit but ultimately surrendered our keys and went up to our room.

The room was very nice. It was really big! We had a king size bed (finally some sleeping space!), a couch, a chair, and a desk. I was surprised at the size of the room. At the front desk, they gave us a couple of coupons for movies. Obviously, we don't refuse movies and we had already planned on seeing at least one during our vacation. We decided to catch a quick matinee since it would be even cheaper. Obviously we went to see Iron Man. I really enjoyed it! Nothing like a good superhero movie to kick start your vacation. When we got back to the room, we took a little nap and then decided to catch an early dinner at Schmidt's Sausage Haus. Yum. We feasted on delicious dishes such as pretzel bites, Reuben sandwiches and Bahama Mamas. Of course we couldn't leave without an infamous cream puff. Swoon.

We next decided to hit up buybuy Baby. They are owned by Bed Bath & Beyond which means we still get a discount! We went there in the hopes of finding a reasonably priced crib but that was a fail. Instead, we walked around the store looking at everything I would LOVE to have. I forced Ben into the clothes section and just started pulling things off racks telling him to look at this! and this! ooh, and this one! He humored me by nodding and smiling. I fell in love with the sun hats and the adorable clothing. We have decided not to buy very much clothing for our little girl just yet because we don't want to end up with too much and have her not even wear some things. I just wanted to buy one outfit to celebrate that we're having a girl. We bought just one, and then we bought another one because... Uh, hello. It was monsters. For a girl.

From there, we decided to just call it a night. We wanted to check out our hotel pool because I got a new suit (!) and we were hoping that a little swim would help both of our backs. We got into our suits and headed down to the pool. We had high hopes because we had to enter a secret elevator and use our secret key code to even get to the floor with the pool. (Okay, so it was just our room key, but secret key code on secret elevator sounds much cooler.) We get to the pool and the first thing I notice is that the pool is strictly 5 ft. That's it. No shallow end, no gradual working your way up to something deeper. Just 5 ft all around. I was a little concerned because I'm only a few inches over 5 ft and I really didn't want to tread water the entire time I was in the pool. They did have some stairs that let you gradually get into the pool, so I just figured I'd stay on those. We both stuck one foot in the water. It was FREEZING. Not just a little cooler than we would have liked. It was cold. Very cold. We tried to make the best of it, but after stepping onto the next step, we both decided it just wouldn't be worth it. We were incredibly disappointed in the pool. One of the things I looked for when booking a hotel was an indoor pool. Fail.

We defeatedly headed back up to our room. We watched some baseball on TV. I don't remember who was playing, I just know we were really paying attention to the scrolling scores at the bottom to see how the Reds were doing.

On Tuesday, we decided to head to Easton Mall. We just decided to walk around a bit. The first store we went to was a dog store. We don't usually buy things from these specialty stores because they are always so expensive. The lady there was very helpful (and also trying to make a sale) and she explained all of their different dog toys. She pointed us to one that is virtually indestructible (necessary for Alex) and that has a minty smell/flavor. We both just laughed because Ales LOVES mint. She likes to go through my purse and chew up my gum. She's also been known to chew on nearly empty toothpaste tubes. We decided we had to get her this ball and another tug toy. Then we found some adorable monster toys and bought those for the nursery. What? Doesn't everyone decorate their nurseries with dog toys? Or just the cool people? :D

We ended up just walking around the whole mall area, stopping in shops that sounded interesting to us. We stopped in a lot of kitchen stores where I drooled over all the colored appliances and Le Creuset cookware. I dragged Ben into ALL of the baby clothes stores and almost died of cute overload. Seriously. This was the conversation in every store.

Me: Aww, look at all the cute things!
Ben: Yep
Me: Oh! Look at this one. Isn't it just adorable?
Ben: Uh huh.
Me: Ohmigosh! I LOVE this one. Seriously, how cute is that?
Ben: It's great.
Me: Oooh. This one is my FAVORITE!
Ben: That's nice.
Me: Nope, I lied. This one is my favorite.
Ben: Maybe we should go.
Me: Can I buy them all?
Ben: No.
Me: You better get me out of here. I think we're going to go broke.

Okay, so his reaction might be a little exaggeration. But he wasn't running around the store professing his love for all the cuteness either.

We had dinner at a place called Adobe Gila's. We got a coupon off of restaurant.com for $25 off our meal. The only catch was that you have to spend $40. Most of the restaurants on that site only require you to spend $35 or less so we figured it must be a pretty upscale place with $20 plates. We walk into a bar that serves Mexican food. Their most expensive thing on the menu is $12. They were having a half price appetizer special. We were struggling to reach $40 worth of food. We ordered an appetizer and the two most expensive things on the menu simply because they cost more. We also both had to order a dessert. Luckily I'm eating for two right now and for the first time EVER Ben was full before I was. I just kept eating. The food was good, but nothing outstanding.

On Wednesday, we woke up and began our drive home. First, we stopped at The Book Loft, which is probably my favorite place ever. Luckily, we planned for this and I was able to go to the bathroom before we left our hotel (Right, Family????). Even though I have a Kindle, I still love to look at books. We thought it might be nice to get some books for the baby and maybe some books to learn what we're supposed to do after we take the baby home. (I keep forgetting that the end of my pregnancy means I actually get to take a baby home with me and while I'm an excellent baby sitter, I figured I might want to get at least one book on the dos and donts of caring for an infant). We looked around for awhile, but ultimately decided not to buy anything. I just couldn't decide. I think sometimes I'm worried that I'm going to buy something and then someone would buy the exact same thing for the baby.

About 10 minutes into our drive home, it started pouring. I really wanted to stop at the Motherhood Maternity Outlet in Jeffersonville because I knew I needed a few dresses for different events I have coming up this summer. We stopped there in the pouring rain, I picked up some dresses to try on and basically hated them all. For some reason, they all looked really funny to me. (It may have something to do with this big belly that I still don't always know how to dress). I did end up finding one that my mom may have to alter depending on how it looks as I get bigger.

It was so nice going to Columbus because since we knew we were only going somewhere for a few days, we didn't spend a lot of the time driving. We got home around 2:00 on Wednesday afternoon so I didn't really feel like we wasted a day just driving. Don't get me wrong, I'm all about the 2 week road trip out west but it was actually nice to just be home 2 hours after we left. Overall, I would say our trip was a success. We had a lot of fun and it was nice to just get away for a little bit.

Wow. If you read this whole post (and without pictures!), MAJOR props to you. I didn't realize it would be this lengthy. If you just skipped to the bottom....well, I probably would have too.