Saturday, October 18, 2008

Vacation Day 1....

We made it in one piece out here to sunny (and hot!) CA. Jon and I both had an enormous to-do list yesterday so didn't make it to bed until midnight and then were up bright and early at 4:30am. Wow, I don't know that I have ever been up that early for the day, but I was so excited to embark on our trip I was wide awake. The kids on the other hand....grouchy, tired, un-excited-to-be-up-so-early-with-an-in-a-hurry-mom. We made it out the door by 5:15 and headed down to DIA.

We parked in long term parking so had to take a shuttle to the terminal and it made for pretty interesting times having 5 suit cases to check, 3 booster seats, a carry on for all 5 of us and a partridge in a pear tree. Basically Jon and I carrying all of these items plus keeping track of 3 children......I wouldn't recommend it. After we got through the nightmare of actually getting up to the terminal, checking our luggage, and getting through security (not to mention making it on time), it was not quite so stressful. Here is a snap shot of the kiddos running to the gate with their back packs. I still can't get over how small this giant back pack makes Cody look. What a midget.

When we finally got a seat at our gate and a moment's rest they were pre boarding for all the "special" passengers which included families with children so we had our queue to get back up and shuffle the kids onto the plane. All in all they did pretty well on the plane. I was excited to see their reaction to flying for the first time. Take off was pretty exciting but after that the whining started and Cody wanted to get off the airplane because it was boring. We did our best to entertain with Ipods and coloring books. At one point both Cody and Alex were quietly listening to a movie on the Ipods. This didn't last long before mom was up taking kids to the bathroom. I think I made 5 trips to the bathroom on that flight. Which warranted a comment from the stewardess about me having the patients of Job from the bible. I give it my best effort! Olivia actually had a hard time popping her ears on our decent but Jon finally got her to pop them by blowing her nose. She was in tears, poor girl.

We ended up renting a mini van for our vehicle this week because I wasn't about to pay a premium price for an expedition or something of the likes and so Jon will have the pleasure of driving his dream car for the week. Ha! He hates mini vans. I had to take a picture of him while he was entranced in his excitement!



We are starting our trip by visiting my aunt Nancy and cousin Kathy in the Palm Desert area so we drove down there from LA. On the way there was this huge wind farm with hundreds of wind turbines. I tried to take a picture but it just didn't capture the massive amounts like I thought it would. They were on both sides of the interstate, it was crazy.When we finally arrived in Palm Desert for the afternoon the kids enjoyed a swim at Kathy's house. I was surprised they swam there because the pool wasn't heated and even thought it was mid 90s outside it was freezing. But they were all in.....


I tried to stay dry but Cody and Alex couldn't touch the bottom so it made it hard to. They had a blast!


Here is Olivia showing off her jumping, what a little fish. She loves the water.




Since I don't see Nancy and Kathy often we had to snap a few photos, of course!

After visiting a bit at Kathy's we came back to Nancy's for dinner and we stayed the night there. Nancy also has a pool and jacuzzi in her back yard so the kids wanted to of course come back and swim there. She turned the heater on in the jacuzzi and the kids played for most of the time with Jon in the "warm tub". This was of course followed by the entourage of when are we getting one of these in our back yard type questions.....in your dreams Olivia! My sister Amy drove down from Sacramento and met us at Nancy's for dinner. Her family is also spending the week with us. We got a snap snot of all of us together. The kids were SO ready for bed by the time 8 o'clock rolled around they went right to bed. Nancy and I sat in the jacuzzi for a bit and got to visit since Jon was also wiped out and went to bed with the kids. It was nice just being able to hang out and relax a bit after a long day. What a fun first day! Now off to bed to do it again tomorrow!

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