We drove to Vegas on Sunday afternoon and spent the night at a hotel, then took the shuttle on Monday to the airport. The timing of the shuttle worked out so we had about 3 hours at the airport before boarding, so it got a bit long. Luckily we were in the newer terminal and there was a kids play area, that Gabe ran around in for a while. We got to Duluth Monday night, and spent the next few nights at some friends' house. Of course, Gabe was on California time and didn't have his own bed, so I had a few late nights trying to get him to settle down and sleep. Over the next couple days I got to see quite a few friends, went to MOPS (which I really miss - it's definitely not the same here), had dinner with my aunt, uncle & cousin, and got to meet a few new babies!
My sister came up and picked us up Thursday afternoon and brought us down to C.R. While home, I got to see a few more friends and lots of family, go to a Tupperware party (I love love love the new bowls I ordered!), go to a benefit for a friend's sister's baby (whom I also got to meet the next day!). Also made a cake for my cousin's daughter's birthday party, which was also a good time. The cake didn't turn out quite how I wanted - I had planned to spend more time on parts of it earlier in the week, but wasn't feeling the greatest for a couple days, so wasn't in the mood to work on it. But it turned out pretty well and everyone said it tasted good.
After a quick 2 weeks, my mom brought us back up to Duluth to fly back to Vegas. The Duluth airport was a bit of an experience - it's very small and kind of old. And once you go through security, you are stuck in a glass panel enclosed room. There were no bathrooms (And I am one of the people always running to the bathroom right before they begin boarding - but not this time...) . And no food. Just a vending machine with pop and water. There weren't enough seats for everyone. And it had to have been at least 80 degrees in there. To make matters worse, the plane was late arriving, so we had to wait an extra half hour. And of course Gabe just wanted to run all over the place. He befriended a few older couples and tried to take their watches.
We finally got going about 8:30pm, and unfortunatley, Gabe was wide awake. Actually he was exhausted, but overstimulated, so would not sleep. So that made for a long flight. He was so close to sleeping so many times but then would start throwing a mini-tantrum to wake himself up. Finally about 20 minutes before we landed, he fell asleep. We had to sit on the runway a while waiting for our gate, so he got to sleep awhile longer. Surprisinly our luggage was at the baggage claim by the time we got there (last time we waited close to an hour for our luggage). Then we found a taxi and got back to the hotel by about 11pm. I was exhausted. Gabe was wide awake. So we had to do his whole bedtime routine to get him settled down - oatmeal, bath, and a bottle of milk. Which was fine, because I like to get him washed up after being on planes - he crawls all over everything and licks half the stuff he can reach, so good to get the germs off asap. lol.
Tuesday morning we went to the buffet for breakfast and then loaded up the car and headed out. We stopped at an outlet mall on the way and walked around and had lunch. Was kind of nice to break up the drive a bit, but wish it would have been more towards the middle of the drive instead of at the beginning. Gabe took a good nap during the ride. Got back to our house around 5pm. Gabe was happy to be home and wandered around for awhile checkiing on all of his toys.
Wednesday we went to Bible study and got together with a friend in the afternoon. When we came home, we went to get the mail, which took forever, because Gabe had to splash in every puddle - and it was pretty much a continuous puddle for 2 blocks... Then when we got back to the house, he decided to play in the puddle that the dripping water from the car port was making. He loved it, even though it was cold....
He wasn't too happy when I made him go in after this. But he needed some warm, dry clothes.
Ok, so that is the past couple of weeks. Will try to update more often... ;-)
