Springfield Quality Time

Aunty Rita came by the house so we got to spend some more time with her before leaving Springfield.

Lydia and I had some back and forth over this giant cradle. Uncle Greg does carpentry as a hobby and made me this solid oak cradle when I was born. My mom has been holding onto it ever since (though I want to say it got loaned out once or twice for baby cousins to use). Now that we live in Seattle transporting this tank was prohibitive so Ernie didn't end up using it, which is sad. 

I like that it has a roof in case we wanted to leave Ernie outside for a while. Surely this thing is bullet proof.

My mom also had a bunch of baby stuff that she wanted us to take. A few things made the cut and others did not. Being baby toys I don't remember playing with any of them so I don't have any sort of emotional attachment to any of it.

They went and brought us take-out Cozy Dog which was very nice.

One of my treasured artifacts from when we won tickets to the World Cup finals in 1994. A good demonstration of how young and confused I was: the match was between Italy and Brazil and I was rooting for Brazil. This was entirely based on the fact that Brazil has a way cooler flag than Italy. I asked my mom to buy me a Brazil t-shirt to wear and she didn't want to, but she made a bet that she would buy me the shirt of whoever won. Brazil won in a shootout so I got my shirt.

I talked to my mom about this recently and she said that Whitney Houston was the pregame show. Not too shabby. I didn't remember that detail.

We made it to the Airbnb in Clayton, MO in time for the man to get swaddled and go to sleepy time.

Springfield Mystery Dinner and Entertainment

It was time to leave St. Louis for a more peaceful and legislatively relevant location: Springfield, Illinois.

Lydia liked that the Airbnb had a hammock hanging from the ceiling.

Man... the drive through Southern Illinois is long, flat, and grey. I'm going to blow the mountains a kiss when I get back to Washington.

Upon entering my hometown we stopped for provisions at Cozy Dog Drive In.

A movie theatre that I used to go to is now a marijuana store. 

My mom had some pretty excellent pictures of me as a kid. I wasn't allowed to have toy guns so I just shot everyone with sticks. Pew pew!

I'm pretty excited about my car seat being made out of leather and metal. Kids these days are soft.

We took my parents on a mysterious night of dinner and entertainment. First was food at Indigo.

The second part of the plan was a bit rougher around the edges. I've been wanting to visit the World Wide Technology Raceway just on the Illinois side of St. Louis in Madison, Illinois for some time. I was also trying to think of taking my parents to do something they hadn't seen before. Well I succeeded in my goals with WonderLight's Christmas but I think we may have waited an hour after driving down an hour to get there. I played Seinfeld episodes on my phone to keep everyone entertained.

A Corny Drive to Chicago

I drove up to Chicago for the weekend to hang out with the boys. There were discussions of picking up Danny in Springfield, Illinois on the way up, but he was unfortunately having some heart trouble so needed to stay home.

I ended up stopping in Springfield anyway for a little road dinner at the originator of the corn dog on a stick: Cozy Dog Drive In.

I arrived fairly late so did some hanging out then went to bed.

I slept on an inflatable bed, which worked out fine. Later on I realized that I in turn was becoming a bed for others. It was like a bed circle of life situation.