The Peanut Gallery: Maine

At the beginning of February we took a family trip to Maine for the Super Bowl. This tradition has its roots way back in 2004 -- that year, our new friends Andrew Lupien and Elizabeth Dyer hosted a Super Bowl / Elizabeth's birthday party at their apartment in Durham, NC, where Caleb and I had just moved in the fall of 2003. Caleb taught math with Andrew and Elizabeth, and with Eric Collins and Allison Bartley, who were also in attendance at the 2004 party. Later that year, all 6 of us (along with a few others) had our first Maine party together at the occasion of Andrew and Elizabeth's wedding on July 3. Two weeks later, Andrew and Elizabeth joined us for our own wedding in Colorado. A month later, back in Durham, the newlywed Lupiens took in the newlywed Dickinsons when our brand new house burned down a week after we moved in. We stayed with them for a week or so before moving into another apartment in the same complex, where we stayed for a few months while our house was fixed. Over the next few years, we all spent tons of time together in Durham... the Lupiens hosted a Super Bowl party each year, we rotated hosting poker nights, and we even got to take another trip to New England together in July of 2006, when Eric and Allison got married in Boston.

In the fall of 2006, Andrew and Elizabeth moved to Portland, Maine, Andrew's home town. We all missed them a lot, and when the 2007 Super Bowl rolled around we figured we should keep the streak alive and watch the game at their house. So we put together an elaborate surprise... Caleb told Elizabeth that he was coming to surprise Andrew for the Super Bowl, and Allison and Eric told Andrew they were coming to surprise Elizabeth for her Feb 6 birthday... and then I decided I'd come along, too. So began the tradition of traveling to Maine each February, which we repeated in 2008 (when I was pregnant with Mazie), 2009 (when Mazie was 9 mos old, we had moved from Durham to Madison, and the Collinses had moved to Boston), and 2010 (when Mazie was 22 months old). Each year was an adventure... in 2007 we missed our connection to Portland on Friday night and ended up spending the night at Allison's mother's house in Boston and then driving up on Saturday -- surprise! In 2008, we drove all the way to the airport early on Saturday morning and then I realized I had forgotten my wallet -- I had to race home and call Andrew Ekblad, who dragged himself out of bed, put on a button-up shirt, and drove me back to the airport in time to catch my flight. In 2009, Caleb was in bed most of the trip with a stomachache. In 2010, I was upstairs putting Mazie to bed and came down to find Andrew Ekblad and Noella hanging out and playing games with the rest of the crew -- surprise again!!

Last year, with our move back to Colorado and other complications, we didn't make the trip, so when we decided to take the trip this year we knew it would be an exciting one. Sure enough, on Wed the 1st, 2 days before we were supposed to leave, Athena woke us up vomiting all over us in bed from about 4-6 am... then slept a bunch and was fine. Mazie went to school in the morning and was fine until about 2 pm, when she and Caleb went to the library. As they got there, she started complaining that her belly hurt, so Caleb turned around and walked home as quickly as he could with MJ on his shoulders. She made it all the way to our front porch, then promptly threw up onto the porch from her perch up there... Caleb mostly managed to dodge it as it came down. We put her in bed with a bowl and she proceeded to get sick every 10-20 minutes from about 3 pm to midnight... Meanwhile, while all of this is going on, Caleb and I were grappling with the fact that we were supposed to fly to Maine on Friday morning, and on Wed morning, there was a winter storm watch for Thursday night through Saturday in Denver. So I spent a bunch of time on Wed on the phone with the airlines trying to see if we could move our flights up to Thursday to try and get out ahead of the storm... also hoping that the kids would have recovered from their stomach bug by then. By late Wed night we hadn't been able to switch our flights, but had gotten someone to tell us we would most likely be able to on Thurs morning... so Caleb and I stayed up late packing and getting ready. At 7 am on Thurs, we got up and called the airlines again and managed to get on a 12 pm flight. The kids slept well all night and got up feeling well... but then Caleb started feeling lousy. We got packed up, took the bus to the airport, and caught our flights (Den to Dulles, Dulles to Portland). The kids did great, and Caleb made it through uneventfully -- he felt terrible the whole way, but no "spewing." We made it to Andrew and Elizabeth's at about 9 pm and went to bed fairly early, and then we all had a great day together on Friday -- everyone was healthy! Mazie had fun playing with Sarah Beth, who was born a few months after our last Super Bowl trip in 2010 -- this was our first time meeting her!

Friday evening, Eric, Allison, and Brady Collins (also a May 2010 baby) drove up from Boston and we all hung out and had pizza together, and then went to bed. Sometime in the middle of the night, I got sick, and then I spent most of the day on Saturday in bed recovering. Everyone else did fine on Saturday and all day Sunday... but then right around Super Bowl time, Sarah Beth and Brady got sick... and then during the night on Sunday all 5 of the remaining adults (everyone but me) took turns visiting the Lupiens 2 bathrooms (fortunately, they moved into a new house since our last visit -- things would have been REALLY bad if they had still been in their very sweet, cozy 1 bathroom house!). Even Caleb, who we thought had already gotten it, got a second round! Monday was Elizabeth's birthday. I got up and went to the grocery store to stock up on ginger ale, yogurt, and pedialyte -- as well as some "Happy Birthday" and "Get Well Soon" balloons for Elizabeth -- and then came back to the house, packed up, and went to the airport to catch our flights home!

Here are some pictures from this year's trip... see, we did manage to have some fun between bouts of sickness!!

The girls on Athena's first plane ride: