Family

Spring Break came and went faster than I thought possible.  Usually it drags on for days on end... and our spring break isn't just one week... it's 2.5 weeks.  By the end, I'm usually about ready to go crazy!

It worked out that Eric would be flying back to SFO from his trip to China during the first week of spring break, so I made plans to drive up with the kids and visit for the same week.  Then, we could all drive home together before Eric had to go back to work.

Our first stop on the long 800 mile road to home was at my aunt's house in San Bernardino.  We usually drive straight through, but I knew Eric would feel better if I broke up the drive into 2 parts.  It was so fun to hang out with my cousins... who happen to be the age of my kids!  What does that make them, second cousins?  Ah, who cares... cousins are cousins! 

Max had lots of fun playing with their dogs, Midnight and Blondie. 

The next day we drove on to Vacaville.  I'm very thankful we didn't have any suburban break downs this time around.  I didn't appreciate cheap gas in CA being $4.30 a gallon.  On Sunday after church, we went over to Jeff and Molly's to surprise their kids with our arrival.  The kids had these grand plans for a surprise ambush in the backyard, but it didn't pan out since the 2 girls were sound asleep and one of my nephews refused to come outside.  Ethan was the only one who got the ambush, but he LOVED it!

On Monday we headed to Fairfield to surprise Eric's parents.  They didn't know we'd come into town, but turns out it was challenging to find them.  After calling and going over to their house, we eventually figured out they were out on their daily walk.  So, we started driving their walking route, and finally found them about a mile from their house.  We rolled down the windows, honked the horn and waved... they were so confused... they thought someone else was waving to them, someone who looked just like me!  We pulled over and yelled, "surprise!"... and boy were they surprised!  Since it quickly turned into a rainy day, we went over to the Jelly Belly Factory with them for a tour.  We only had to wait about 15 minutes and you can't complain about free Jelly Belly's, right?

On Thursday, I went to Pleasant Hill to pick up the boys from their BART ride home from SFO and stopped in to see my grandma too.  Her health is deteriorating, so it was hard to find a time to get the kids down to see her when she wasn't in bed, sick.

Thursday night Ben came over to my mom's house to spend the night and hang out with us and Adam before he had to go back to Eureka.

On our last day we went to the museum at Mare Island.  It's filled with almost a hundred years of memories from life on the Naval Base before it was shut down in the 90's.  Now it's filled with abandoned buildings and beautiful parks.  I'd LOVE to go back next time I'm in town and do some photo shoots out there.  It's full of amazing possibilities.

I love my family... and I love Eric's family.  I feel so lucky to be a part of this big crazy group!  I just wish we had more time to spend with them all.  There is never enough time when we visit to spend quality time with everyone like we'd like to, but we do our best with the time we have.  Until next time...

Miscellaneous

Just got back last night from our trip to California. We were originally planning to stay through Sunday and drive home Monday, but Eric had some work issues that couldn't wait another day. I HATE travelling on Sunday, but the Lord blessed us nonetheless... we set a record for time exactly 12 hours (the trip up took 13 1/4). Not sure what the big difference was except that we didn't take Highway 12 (and never will ever again) and we ate our lunch in the car while we drove. We only had a mile or two of Sunday night traffic coming back into Phoenix and saw no accidents (or really any cops, either.) But to our visitors who like to speed on I-10... beware... photo radar cameras have been installed in several spots just outside the Phoenix Metro area and a radar detector won't save you on this one! Thank goodness I was only going 5 over the limit when we passed the first one!

Over the last 10 days we've logged 1802 miles and used 106 gallons of gas (average price for gas was $3.49... ouch!) We visited 1 great grandma, 4 grandparents, seven aunts and uncles, nine cousins, and all of Eric's long lost friends from High School!

There are lots of things I plan to blog about from the trip... I'm not sure they will end up being in any kind of chronilogical order, but that's okay... you'll never know the difference, right? And hopefully Eric will find the time to blog about his last trip out with the Scouts soon... just before we left for CA, he and Taylor went canoeing on the Colorado River and have some fun and harrowing tales to share from the trip!

Almost There

I've been packing the kids' suitcases for our trip to visit the family and I realized something absolutely WONDERFUL! No more packing diapers!!! ...Or wipes!!!! They take half the suitcase space in Brayden's bag and I often don't get through a whole trip without having to buy more, but we are done with that now! Not even a pull-up for bedtime! YIPPEE!!!

We are almost to the point of being able to travel without all the nuisances of babyhood. I'm NOT bringing a porta-crib, or a stroller, or diapers.... I'm just down to a car seat and a sippy cup.

We hit the road at 6:00 a.m. tomorrow... for 12 glorious [insert heavy sarcasm] hours of desert and brown (dead) rolling hills. The end result will be worth it and I FINALLY got the car's DVD player working this morning (talk about cutting it close) and we road tested it while I ran my last minute errands today. So far, so good....

Time to get back to the laundry... why is it a never ending process?