The first 24 hours of our family vacation consisted of car travel, sleep-over at grandma & grandpa's and more car travel . . . 2 hours longer in the car than expected thanks to an abandoned U-haul truck. Props go out to those of you who live in California, but I'd rather die than deal with California traffic.
On Friday we convoyed with my parents to Southern California. Malcolm loved getting away from his siblings and riding with the grandparents. Highlights of the stretch between Las Vegas and Newport Beach were:
Stopping at the McDonald's in Barstow, the one with the train-cars you can dine in. I remember stopping here when I was 8, same age as Jesse is now. They loved it. They were so cooperative for pictures . . . amazing.
Once we were back on the road, with me driving, we passed the Oscar Mayer Weiner Mobile. I grabbed the camera out of my purse as we approached it, and handed it to Dave . . . he's not as camera/picture savvy, so here's what we ended up with, but you get the idea. I hadn't ever seen it in person.
With less than 45 minutes until our destination, we ended up in an awfully annoying traffic jam. A section of interstate was shut down due to an abandoned U-haul truck in a restaurant parking lot with newspaper covering the windows & something leaking from the truck . . . things like that shouldn't happen on a Friday afternoon. Thank goodness the kids hadn't had much to drink in Barstow. Thank goodness the kids could entertain themselves. Thank goodness we don't live in California . . . love the beach, hate the traffic.
We arrived at our destination much later than we had planned. Jesse was so anxious for his cousins to arrive from Arizona. He especially adores his cousin Adam. I love that fact because Adam is an awesome kid and I'm not just saying that because he's my nephew. I can't think of a better example for Jesse. The kids got to stay up extra late, and the adults even later . . . too bad for us, the kids didn't want to sleep in the next morning :)
Saturday morning we woke up to rain. A steady drizzle, low clouds and a chill in the air. Snails . . . gigantic snails dotted the sidewalks. We also woke up to one of the kids having the flu . . .poor Moose spent the entire day with a fever, chills & puking his little guts out. Hopefully only a 24 hour thing. My dad and I did the grocery shopping, which was fun for me. An escape from the kiddos! Lillie roped anyone she could into playing UNO with her . . . she is addicted to that game and would play it all day long if she could. We have to negotiate how many games she gets to play. Usually I'll sit down and play three rounds with her and that holds her for awhile.
By about 3:PM the rain had stopped and the clouds had burned off . . . it was a beautiful afternoon. The resort we are staying at has three pools. The kids were so excited to FiNaLlY go to the pool . . . the view from the pool, closest to our room is breathtaking. It was just us in the pool area for quite awhile. Lillie took to her water wings and got really brave. Overly brave. Overly confident. She learned a hard lesson by not sticking to the shallow stairs and jumping past them after she had asked me to take off her water wings. At least she knows her limits now . . . all my kids are fish, they love swimming. They loved swimming in the hot tub, something they aren't allowed to do in our community hot tub until they're 6 years old.
And as I sit here now, listening to the wild, alcohol fueled, loud-mostly on the balcony party above us, I can't wait to see what Day Two has to bring . . .
1 comment:
Glad you made it....have SOOO much fun.
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