Jenny's Bachelorette Party

This weekend, I spent my first night away from Ellie. I traveled to Austin to celebrate one of Jenny's last weekends as a free woman. There's nothing like a full weekend of debauchery to help your body remind you that you're over 30. Also reminding me I'm over 30 - road tripping in my friend Kristine's car and sitting in the back seat next to her two and a half year old daughter, Mary Margaret, while she shows me how her lambie can poo-poo and tee-tee in the play toilet and watching Elmo and Dora. Back in college, we didn't take toddlers on road trips with us. And if we did, there's a good chance we would have been arrested for taking them to Mexico and selling them in exchange for beer money. But don't worry - MM wasn't sold for cerveza. She was dropped off at her grandparents house in Austin.

As soon as we left Dallas, I realized that I left my breast pump. I'm still nursing Ellie at morning and at night, so I sort of needed it. I told myself I could deal - I would just have to be uncomfortable. Then about halfway to Austin, I remembered that I had left my outfit for Saturday night hanging on my closet door. Awesome. So after dropping MM off, we stopped at Target so I would have something to wear. I'm sure Jenny and Kristine wanted to kick me because they just wanted to get there, but they were actually very patient. Jenny is good at putting outfits together so she grabbed some stuff and brought it to me in a dressing room. I sort of felt like I had my own personal stylist... but I don't think stylists usually shop in stores where you have to take a number for the articles of clothes you take back to the dressing room. I made it out of there with a black top, jeans, and a metallic belt.

We finally made it there around 9:00. We stayed on the south shore of Lake Travis in a house called Waterstone Lodge. When I grow up, I want to live there. It was right on the water and so beautiful. In all, I think that there were 18 girls there so it was a pretty big party. After dinner, Meg, Bonnie, Debbie, Jennifer, Kristine and I sat by the fire on the patio to drink wine and laughed hysterically at some college photo albums I brought. We really knew how to rock a jean jumper. The party continued onto the hot tub where we stayed until 3AM. There was one awkward moment where Meg asked us all who we were voting for. A headed debate ensued. After about 15 minutes, we finally had to switch the subject, and I told her that next time she's at a party she should stick to a less divisive topic like abortion or religion.

I tried to sleep in on Saturday, but only made it to about 8:30. I think I'm so used to getting up early every morning now that it's impossible for me to sleep late. We all laid out by the pool for most of the day and relaxed. I read my book by Chelsea Handler which kept on making me laugh out loud. After we all got ready, we had a lingerie shower for Jenny. Her sisters made this cute video of her future husband where they'd ask him a question and then pause it to see if she could guess what he would say.

Since we were pretty far away from downtown, we had a party bus take us to dinner at a fabulous restaurant in Austin called Kenichi. For some reason, we thought it would be fun for us to take some serious "modeling pictures" after we ate. I don't know where we come up with these weird ideas. After dinner, we started off on the patio of The Belmont, but it was a little lower key than what we were hoping for, so we moved onto Cedar Street Courtyard, a place with a live band and dancing. Since we had four pregnant girls with us, the bus got us around 12:15 and took us back to the house. I was in the back of the bus so I could see the road in front of us. I thought the driver was going to wreck trying to avoid the deer. Better him in the bus than us in one of our cars.

By the end of the weekend, I was EXHAUSTED. We headed back to Big D on Sunday morning. For all photos, you can look at my shutterfly account. Very sad to say goodbye to everyone, but we'll be together in two more weeks for the wedding. So where were Ellie and Lee during all of this? They drove to Tyler on Saturday morning to visit B.B. and Doc. According to Lee, Ellie got adventurous and tried some some bacon. I was so glad to see both of them when I got home. He was exhausted on Sunday night and went to bed at 9:00. Taking care of the little one is hard work (and acting like your 18 again is equally hard). We have another very jam-packed weekend coming up... Kyle's wedding. Can't wait to see the fam!