Oh-Bla-Di

In what can only be described as a fit of awesomeness, when we arrived home from our roadtrip to San Antonio on May 1, I downloaded all the photos and videos and selected winners for this blog post.  Monday morning, I had them uploaded.  Now, more than a week later (in what can only be described as a fit of not-awesomeness), I’m finally getting around to posting them.  Since I’m long on photos and short on words and time, here’s a list of ten great things about our trip!  (Brace yourself, this may be the longest blog post EVER.)

1.  Roadtrip!  We chose to drive to San Antonio this time, so got to take Noah on his first-ever roadtrip.  Considering how hard we pushed the mileage per day, both kiddos did great.  Ava watched a TON of movies (Incredibles, Peter Pan & Little Mermaid were big winners) and Noah was either eating, sleeping or fussing the whole way.  We crashed in El Paso for the night on the way there and got to go for a quick swim before going to Chili’s to eat dinner.  We were all exhausted at the end of the first day, but still got up crazy early on Day 2 to hit the road.  You know that any driving before the sun comes up doesn’t count, right?

2.  We got to San Antonio early on Good Friday afternoon and settled right into playing with heirloom toys and a few we brought along.  By the end of the day, we’d already played in the kiddie pool and had an amazing dinner.  When we woke up on Saturday, Auntie Moe had joined us and we could hardly believe we’d only been there for about 12 hours!

3.  The weekend was packed with church and cooking and Easter celebrations.  We dyed Easter eggs on Saturday afternoon while dinner was cooking…and just in time for the adults to clean up and rush out the door to Easter vigil.  To say we were packing in the memory-making would be an understatement!  Sadly, I don’t have any pictures of the grown ups dressed up to go to church.  Since I had a great dress, I consider this to be quite sad.

(Matt’s great idea for keeping Noah occupied.  Trap the sippy between the table and tray.  Dude has some serious perseverance.)

4.  Easter morning was fun.  We were up turbo early with the kiddos (have I mentioned yet that Noah was sick and running a low grade fever up to this point?) and watched some TV while we waited for grandparents to come play Easter baskets/eggs with us.  Turns out Grampa was sick, so we didn’t see him at all that day.  We did get around to hunting Easter baskets though, and Ava was pretty excited with what she found in hers (a ladybug watch!).

5.  Easter afternoon was a party at the White’s house.  It was supposed to be at Caspers’ but had to move since we were passing around the sickies.  We even made sure to get photos of the kids in their Easter best!  Just for fun, here’s last year.  And the one before that.

The kids had a great time at the party and were officially wiped out by the end of it!

6.  Our kiddos are so lucky to have two sets of their great-grandparents around.  And we’re so lucky to get to take them to visit.  We got to see Mahgie & Poppie at the Easter party and again at their house while we were in Texas.  Such a treat to get to see your babies loved on by their great-grandparents.  Noah met them for the first time at the Easter party.

And then more visiting at Air Force Village.

7.  We did two “special activities” with the whole family while we were visiting.  On Thursday, we went to the San Antonio Zoo.  Special highlights were the elephant demonstration, the reptile house, making a toy with the mold-a-rama, and popsicle treats.

That same night, we got to go see a Missions baseball game.  It was Noah’s first ever!

8.  Speaking of firsts, we had two this trip.  Noah spiked a fever on Monday so we got our first “see the doc while traveling” experience.  Ear infection…boo.  Not the most fun of firsts.  But, by Tuesday afternoon, it was like we had a whole different baby.  So much less fussy and so much more fun!

But, Matt and I had a fun first in that we got to go spend a night downtown on the Riverwalk.  It was our first time leaving the kiddos overnight.  We had a great time watching crappy cable TV (with no one asking us for anything!), going out to dinner, and sleeping for eight blissful hours in a row.  We only got one picture of such a momentous occasion…in the mirror of the elevator of our hotel.

9.  In our down time this visit, we just did a lot of eating, drinking and hanging out.  Ava played in the back yard a TON, which was great because she doesn’t get to do that much here.  Mostly, she played Ladybug Girl with her trusty sidekick, “Bingo.”

We got to share a meal with Ken, too, which was a total treat.  Ken married Matt and I, and we love to see him; but, he usually travels in the summer and we’ve missed him the last few years.  So many years, in fact, that he hadn’t met our kids yet!  There’s something special about a meeting like this, I think.

10.  Our return trip was pretty smooth sailing and we learned lessons from the first leg.  We left more pool time at the hotel and landed in a smaller town to spend the night.  So much less stressful!  We got home on Sunday at 12:15pm and were completely unpacked with kids down for naps by 2pm.  Matt and Ava even ran the train we hauled home for a while that night!

Thanks, Caspers, for a great trip!  We’re already resting up for another one!