I’m Levitating

“I got you, moonlight, you’re my starlight
I need you all night, come on, dance with me
I’m levitating
You, moonlight, you’re my starlight (you’re the moonlight)
I need you all night, come on, dance with me
I’m levitating”

And now, without further ado, is a recap of our Minneapolis trip!

You know I write these things down because with each week that passes, I forget more and more. So we have photos and Facebook and blogs to fill in the rest! Would you believe that I forgot the name of my favorite nurse from Sawyer’s birth? Kathy! It was Kathy! I had to look here to figure that out. I also loved Emily and Sarah and the one who told me about blood patches, but golly, what was her name? I blame the headache. Anyway, back to Minneapolis! I want to try to keep it brief(ish) because I’m about to see my sister and kids for the first time in SIX MONTHS. I’m feeling very, “Nettie! Celie!” about it. Gold star if you know the reference. Why do I remember those two names and not the names of the spinal headache nurses?! Gosh, for someone looking to write less than my usual 2,000 words today, I’m not doing a great job. So, let’s begin. Cassidy’s amazing cousin married her love, Greg, in Minneapolis last month. It was a large wedding. We flew for the first time since pre-COVID. We flew with two babies. And we got COVID somewhere on that trip, but we think it was from the flight home because no one from the family got it.

First, we had the flight there after a 3:30am wakeup and drive to Bradley International.

The Flight:

If the babies thought it was strange to be woken up at 3:30am, sort of fed, stuffed in a car, taken out of a car, stuffed onto a shuttle, taken out of a shuttle, put through security, carried onto a plane, and then taken into the sky, they didn’t really let on. I mean, Sawyer cranked out a bit on the crowded shuttle, but he was lulled by the TV going in the vehicle. And Rider was pretty darn impressed with the plane taking off. He used to say, “plane” but it sounded more like, “peen.” For some reason, he started calling “airplanes” the same word he uses for “alligators,” which is “alli-go-go.” So it is nice to think of giant alligators shuttling passengers back and forth in their giant bellies. I mean, that’s no more or less miraculous than what actually happens. You know what else was miraculous? Sawyer slept through the entire flight, in my poor, sore arms, and Rider was entertained and entertaining, but not loud. Then we landed smoothly in Minnesota!

The older kids got Delta wings too!

Day 1:

We still had to get our giant amount of luggage, which was a huge hike all over the airport, and then get to the car rental agency and rent our TWO CARS, because that was somehow cheaper than one car to handle all six of us and our luggage. That was rather amusing, but then it was putting those rental car seats in the cars, all while everyone was tired and hungry, and Scarlet was headachy and queasy. Then, finally, we learned that we could check in at 10:00am and that it was almost 10:00am – yay! We checked into our wonderful hotel, where we needed two rooms (one for Cassidy, me, & the babies and one for Scarlet and Des). Scarlet lied down in a cold, dark room while I nursed Sawyer, and Cassidy, Des, and Rider went out to bring back food, which was DELICIOUS. I heard a voice in the hallway and thought it was Cassidy, but it was actually the bride, the groom, and their amazing dog! So it was so awesome to visit with them for a bit. That perked Scarlet up, along with the hot meal, and then it was exploration time, made fun because the hotel was on an island on the Mississippi River. We had stores, restaurants, and the wedding venue right out our window or across a bridge. One set of in-laws was also staying at this hotel.

So that was some fun exploring/them taking some of the kids off of our hands.

Cassidy invited both sets of his parents out to dinner at our hotel, and it was fine, but super hot and in the sun. The server was crude and he made fun of my dislike of truffles. Then we went to the rehearsal dinner after party and got to see so many of Cassidy’s family members. That part was awesome. My stomach hurt from too much food in the hot sun, and too much travel, but it rallied wonderfully for this party. Plus, the Uber drivers didn’t blink at us taking two babies into their cars. I think we were only there an hour or so, but it was enough time for many hugs and mocktails. I’ll be sharing a ton of photos I didn’t take, and I can’t necessarily credit the photos because we were on a photo share text chain, but I think my father-in-law took many of them!

Then we went back to the hotel, and everyone slept through the night, even the newborn.

Day 2:

We woke up and decided to meet one of my mothers-in-law at the place we had gotten takeout at the previous morning. For those traveling to Minneapolis, it’s called Wilde Cafe. Don’t sleep on the Smoked Gouda Hash Browns or Banana Nutella Sammi! After breakfast, we did something a little crazy. We went to the Mall of America. That’s right! Scarlet was looking for Squishmallows, and the rest of us were just intrigued. We started at their aquarium (Minnesota’s biggest, which doesn’t say much, probably) because there were mermaids and sharks, and then we shopped a lot. All I wanted was a Caribou Coffee drink, which I didn’t get, but we went on a few runs later in the day to grab various items for the wedding, and I finally got something iced, decaf, caramel, and delicious. We barely covered a fraction of that giant mall. And I didn’t find it crowded at all.

We BARELY saw masked people, but that’s fine. We still wore ours a lot. It mostly paid off.

Sharks, like planes (and alligators, dinosaurs, and dragons) are also “alli-go-gos.”

We had a few disastrous errands to run before the wedding, like getting a spare bottle for Rider, and finding a card for the bride and groom, and I immensely regretted my terrible sense of direction while driving around that little island. All was well, though, and we spent a few air-conditioned hours getting a family of six all spiffed up for the wedding. It was really something walking into that wedding as a family of six, with our giant double stroller. Luckily, kind people (cousin Aaron in particular) got photos of us, like the wonderful first one on this post! Framers!

The dog walked down the aisle!

It would have been hard to find a dry eye in the place during the ceremony. The bride’s sister sang her down the aisle. Her mother read a poem that referenced our wedding. The music played as a much-needed breeze swept up from the Mississippi. Rider shrieked once, but otherwise, the babies were perfect. I hadn’t been to a wedding since pre-COVID days, and even though I don’t consider these post-COVID days (because people still die every day, like WTF), it was nice to feel normal and surrounded by young love, old love, medium love. Just love. This amazing ceremony was followed by a cocktail/appetizers party. I went to nurse out on the river.

Then it was party time!

Wedding Highlights:

• Wedding food! Man, I missed fancy food. I just love the way they cook potatoes. Plus, wedding coffee and dessert tables. Yummy salads too!

• Our table was all Bowmans, and some I didn’t know! Cousin Susan held Sawyer and put him right to sleep!

• I went to the bathroom to change Sawyer and a group of women in there surrounded me and offered me help and support. Queens, I tell ya! They didn’t even believe he was my fourth!

• When I walked out with him, a man stopped me and said, “You’re doing a great job, Mama!”

• Dancing. There were all these line dances and people knew the moves! I didn’t! Also, cousin Aaron shared so many great dancing moments with Rider. I hope the professional photographer caught that.

• I was nursing during “Love Train” and probably had my boob somewhat out, and the bride caught my eye, grinned, and steered the giant love train in another direction. Yet they all saw me and waved broadly to me. Hey, it’s family!

• The bride is such an open and loving person and whenever I’d run into her, her wonderful and low, sultry voice would say, “I lovvvvvvve you.”

• This was our first time unmasked in public, in a large group of people, since pre-COVID. We knew we would most likely get COVID, but it was risk vs. reward. We just couldn’t miss this wedding and that food. And after all of that, no one else got COVID so we probably got it from the plane (and from our two unmasked babies) and not the wedding!

The next morning was exciting. We got a quick Starbucks breakfast on the road and then went to the house in Bloomington where my father-in-law grew up, and where Cassidy spent many Christmases. This was the first time we had humid weather and it was BAD. We walked along Nine Mile Creek, where the kids’ great-grandmother has a bench dedicated to her. Pushing the double stroller uphill in the humidity was BAD, but I fell into natural step with (follow me here) Cassidy’s dad’s brother’s son’s wife. So basically a cousin! Cousin-in-law? She also somehow knows my writer first cousin so it’s a really small world. This was a truly special walk. Des got to walk one of cousin Ezi’s three dogs, and Uncle Stephen wore the best shirt ever:

After that sweaty fun, we went back to our hotel to shower and check out. Then there was a wedding after party lunch type thing at The Market at Malcolm Yards. What a FUN and tasty place. I wish they had something like that near us. It was rainy so the doors were closed but they had garage doors throughout the whole industrial warehouse type place to make it more of an open market. We could have gotten COVID there, come to think of it. We got charcuterie, salads, soups, milkshakes, and more.

And then our last stop before our night flight was Aunt Deborah’s house! I don’t think we got COVID there, because no one else had it after that stop. It was delicious and crowded and Rider was very busy. I got maybe too comfortable being with family, nursing, eating, etc. that we certainly overstayed our welcome. Cassidy and Scarlet told me so! Luckily I apologized to Aunt Deborah and she was totally cool about it. I’m hoping they all got a lot of rest after we left for the airport. The flight home was not really uneventful because it was terribly turbulent and freaked out the kids. Rider and Sawyer slept through it, but the adults in front of us pretty much told me they were praying for their lives. I guess it was bad? I was so distracted and I’d been through worse. Sawyer also had a massive blowout RIGHT BEFORE landing so we had to scramble to get him cleaned and changed, and buy sanitizing wipes from the flight crew, and he was SCREAMING. It was only for 30 seconds, though, and then he was fine. We landed around midnight in Hartford, and most of us slept on the way home. And that was really that!

What. A. Trip. I’m levitating!

“You want me, I want you, baby
My sugarboo, I’m levitating
The Milky Way, we’re renegading
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah”

“I’m Levitating” came on during the wedding and I found it rather catchy!