Wild Blonde Rumpus: A trip to the land of the Sun

Saturday, January 28, 2012

A trip to the land of the Sun

Last week the Squidgelet took a trip to The Land Where the Sun Lives: aka, Southern California and Arizona. It was his fourth & fifth plane trip, and far more time in his car seat then he really preferred, but aside from a few incidents, he traveled like a champ for someone not even a year old yet.

While in Southern Cali, he did all the touristy things: visited the La Brea Tar Pits:

Went whale watching and hit the Aquarium of the Pacific (where, coincidentally, his favorite Baby Genius video was filmed):

Got all fancied up for a wedding:

Went swimming for the first time at the hotel in Anaheim:

and took some family portraits:

There were other memorable moments, such as a fender bender in Beverly Hills at the intersection of Santa Monica Boulevard and Wilshire Boulevard (which the Squidgelet did not even bother to wake up for); seeing Private Practice being filmed on the Santa Monica Pier; having one of the best burgers ever at In-N-Out (okay that was my moment, but it still counts since there is no where in Oregon to acquire such deliciousness); seeing five fin whales blowing during the whale watching; spending far too much time in a small moving vehicle, including getting stuck in impossible Los Angeles traffic; getting to wander around in short sleeves & shorts because it was WARM & SUNNY; Tristan & Kaeden & I getting a hotel all to ourselves in Phoenix with really, amazingly comfortable beds and the NatGeo channel; and getting to finally meet a blogger friend in real life & being able to claim her as a friend for realz, instead of my family looking at me weirdly when I say "Becky/DragonMonkey/Squidgelet did this" and them saying..."Don't they have real names?"

Not so great moments including an emergency diaper change while stuck in Los Angeles traffic, paying way too much for not that great a burger in Los Angeles, my shoes for the wedding literally killing my feet & walking barefoot back to the minivan, forgetting my swim suit at home in Portland and buying one at Wal-Mart that was way too big, spending a week in a moving vehicle, and eating way, way too much fast food. On the drive back to LAX from Phoenix to catch the flight home, I ordered some BK on the road and it just tasted like soap, a sign I had gone right past my tolerance for fast food and tried my own version of the movie Super Size Me; and not getting a picture of Becky's herd and mine, or at least of the two Squidgelets together.

Through it all, Kaeden either walked:

or spent some time viewing his world from his throne/Ergo:

which I love a little bit more every. single. day.

But mostly, we walked. We demanded to walk, pretty much everywhere, which we tried to give him a lot of time to do to make up for being stuck in his car seat so much.

Kaeden, for being such a sensitive little man, willingly slept pretty much everywhere. It was really worth the bother of lugging along his big play pen and his softest blankets, because he would quite happily sleep there every night, even though we hit a total of three different hotel rooms, plus my aunt's house. He also got into the routine of sleeping as soon as we loaded him into the mini van (which I no longer hate btw, and can possibly see myself in someday, sigh). This habit was good, except when we were only driving for less than an hour, in which case he would wake up cranky cause he only got a 30 minute nap in.

All in all, quite the satisfying if highly stressful, in the middle of Tristan's first term back at school and Kaeden's teething just become a toddler and my plain crazy time vacation. Now back to the regularly scheduled program of daily lovely life, namely getting Tristan through school, getting ready to move somewhere, someday, really getting a handle on finances, and of course tackling the dreaded, fear inducing, bed invader aka laundry. But only after the following pictures I couldn't help but share: