Catching up

Breaking News~ It's been a long time since I've blogged.
We've been busy a wee bit on the busy side. I must revert to the tried and true list form to catch all 2 of you up to date on the who, what, when, where, and why of the last couple weeks.

-- I last posted on the day we cleaned our Monterey house. The next morning, we met with our landlord, passed our inspection, got our security deposit back, sighed in relief (the house was perfect, but the landlord was odd, and the security deposit huge) and went to the movies while the kids had their last day of school.

- We stayed one more night in the base lodging. Alex requested that she be allowed to fall asleep in our room instead of with Derek, and could she please have a box of tissues in bed with her. Poor baby wanted to cry in private. She hated saying goodbye to her school chums. Thankfully we've kept her busy ever since then, so she hasn't had much of a chance to be sad.

- The next morning we left dark and early to drive to Las Vegas. Along the way, we pit stopped with some friends stationed at Edwards AFB, which is right along the road to Vegas. Popping in to see friends all over the country is one thing I love about the military life. We meet, we scatter, and then I stop in to rummage through your fridge on a road trip.

- We made good time into Vegas and then spent a week hanging out with great friends. There was much eating, chatting, lounging, and merriment. We even made it down to the strip one night to see what all the fuss was about. True fact-- it's pretty cool! All the lights, the fountain shows, and the beautiful hotels and casinos were fun to see. And the mountains surrounding the city were beautiful. I wasn't sure what to expect, but I liked Vegas way more than I thought I would. Thanks for having us, Campbells! :)

- Our next stop was Michigan, to visit family over the holidays. Josh hadn't been back here for 3 and a half years! I usually come up when he's gone for extended periods, but that means that he goes for a long time without making it up here.

-- When it was time to leave Josh drove the van from Las Vegas to Michigan. The kids and I took the "easy" way out by flying.

-- "Easy" is in quotation marks, because when you have a tight connection and your first plane is delayed and you miss your second flight and you're in the airport at 10:30pm with your two kids and one of them sits in a puddle of something on a chair while you're talking to the unhelpful desk and they haven't had dinner yet it can be a little stressful.
The upside is that I had plenty of folks I could wake up call that aren't too far from the airport. My dad happened to be at work still, so he hopped on the highway and picked us up.
Thanks Dad! I'm sorry you didn't get to bed until 2:30 in the morning. Bet you thought you were done being kept up at night about 32 years ago, eh?
Wrong.

While we were waiting to get picked up, the slightly less unhelpful desk provided us with vouchers to spend in the airport for food and whatnots. But everything was closed.
So we ordered a pizza to be delivered to the airport, and we raided the only open store in the airport for drinks, treats, books, magnets, and whatever else I could find to spend the vouchers on.
They're only good for 24 hours, after all.

My saving grace was that the kids were still operating on pacific time, so it didn't feel quite as late to us and it normally would have.

-- For the past week, we've been staying at Mom & Mark's place, along with my sister and her family.
My kids don't get to see their cousins very often, so it's always fun (and loud. very, very loud) when we're all together. Also, Mark likes to buy sweets. And he likes to buy in bulk. It's a disaster of a combination for my waistline.

-- Dad and Cindy are just a few miles down the road, and they've hosted us for several dinners, as well as an impromptu snow-play session which naturally included 4 kids on 2 sleds being pulled behind a 4-wheeler. Naturally.

-- Is anyone else sensing a theme of eating running through this whole recap? There's been a lot of eating.

-- Tomorrow we head over to Pat the Bunny's to visit with Josh's family. Sadly, we found out early this morning that Josh's grandma, Grannie Annie, passed away in the night. We are so sad that we've been so close by for the last week and he didn't get a chance to see her before she passed. But we are glad that we'll get to attend her funeral, which wouldn't have been possible a couple of weeks in the future.

-- Because, ya know what? We're going to Spain. And we're going to be there in less that 2 weeks.
Crazy talk.

So that's that. I'll try not to let so much time go by between posts again!