The Good
#1's face the moment we entered our hotel room after a long day of travel. Grandma D had it fully stocked with toys, books, snacks, a little mini Christmas tree and most importantly, root beer. He had been so tired, but once he saw everything he didn't stop jumping on the bed for at least an hour. Each new discovery thrilled him.
It's amazing the things kids find to do for entertainment in a hotel room. #1 had a blast keeping a balloon afloat with the window fan and then shooting it with a dart gun. Baby N was thrilled to run down the hotel's endless hallways and took off at every opportunity.
Seeing baby Caroline and marveling at what an extremely good- and sleepy!- baby she was.
Seeing #1 play with his cousins- priceless.
Going back and forth from our hotel room to Grandma's. It was like Grandma's house was 10 feet away- something very desirable when the kids wake up at 5am and you need a babysitter so you can go back to sleep.
Just a cute moment in our hotel room. One nice thing about staying at a hotel is not having to worry too much about cleanup. Which was a very good thing due to the throwup- see below- and the havoc kids can do in a small space over 7 days.
After some trial and error, we made an excursion to a nearby children's museum. The three cousins took off in different directions- good thing there was three adults to follow them!
Payton preferred the construction area.
Viktoria got up close and personal with the water features.
Three generations. I love these two.
Grandma rocks!
We ate dinner on Christmas Eve at Golden Corral. It was a very pleasant dinner filled with a large quantity of food. We sat across from the dessert bar, which caused the kids to hold a stakeout at a nearby table.
The kids had a lot of fun at Aunt V's house. Playing computer games and playing with toys.
The Bad
We were supposed to go play with our friends the Bybees before we left, but their kids came down with strep throat. Maybe next time... although we missed out on some sledding and a huge holiday feast. Sad!
Babies who don't watch movies on a portable DVD player + long airplane trips= misery
24 hour stomach flu that we acquired on Christmas day.
We played musical beds a lot on this trip. Sick kids don't sleep well and as a result, neither do their parents.
Even Grandma wasn't immune to having visitors at obscene hours.
#1 is not a morning person and he doesn't react well to being unexpectedly overstimulated. This has created some rather unpleasant Christmas morning memories. This year was a little more tempered than last year, but still not the greatest.
At least he sucked it up in the end.
The fire alarms in the hotel went off the morning after Christmas. Apparently it wasn't enough that we had been throwing up all night- someone thought pulling the fire alarm as a prank would top off the experience for us.
Grandma bought this giggling cat for Viktoria. Unfortunately, #1 liked it and requested one of his own. Luckily, we dodged that bullet.
Cute Christmas jammies courtesy of Aunt V and Uncle R.
We went on this trip with 3 suitcases and came back with 5. The difference is largely due to toys which took some fangling when we got back to fit into our house.
The Funny
The first hotel we stayed at was more a long term stay facility where they rented out by the week. One amenity we found hilarious was the toilet paper in the vending machine. Just in case of emergency.
At the children's museum we went to with the twins, #1 had the most fun gardening. Apparently we haven't sufficiently taught our son that canned goods and chemicals are not ideal seeds to be planted. He had a blast though.
If the blog Cake Wrecks took submissions from non-professionals, I'd have a true winner. Two days before Christmas, I tried to start planning #1's birthday cake. #1's only request was to have a jet plane cake. I looked all over for a plane cake pan with no luck and my sister even continued the quest with no hits. I guess it didn't really matter since baking a cake at the hotel was out of the question because there was no oven and I really didn't want to mess up my sister's kitchen. Walmart didn't have cakes you could order with planes on them, so we decided to order one from Dairy Queen. Unfortunately they didn't have enough time to make one for us so I sent S to get a plain cake and we'd just ice on a plane- like the word play? The only one S could find was one with a Christmas tree on it. Not a big deal...just scrape off the Christmas tree and you have a blank slate...right? Wrong. Ice cream cakes are not as easy to mold as I had thought.
The first problem...
Once we got the plane on, it didn't look that bad. I think it would have taken less time just to make a cake from scratch though. The big problem came when we all got stomach flu and so the birthday celebration was postponed to the next day. By that time the food coloring had bled out causing the jet to look like it had a bad case of diarrhea instead of dropping bombs as #1 requested.
A cake decorator I am not...
To make matters worse, the candles died on the way to the table- perhaps they were ashamed that the pinnacle of their creation was to end on this disastrous cake. At least 4 held on until #1 blew them out.
It's no wonder I asked Aunt Chandra to take care of baby N's cake...
I love that kids are easily impressed. #1, you are the best- we love you!
One more state to go...
1 comment:
We thought the plane was suppose to look that way... it is a jet plane and jet planes do go fast... therefore they are blurred and so are their bombs!:)
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