California

Since we had a week long excursion, there are lots of pictures to share and stories to tell. For your (especially for those who need a blog fix) sanity and mine, I'm going to break it up into several posts.

We left very early Friday morning. We packed into George's parents' RV and headed to the airport. It turned out to be great that they offered their RV because George and I didn't think far enough ahead to realize that we wouldn't have been able to fit all of our luggage and baby equipment into our vehicle. We arrived at the airport with plenty of time to spare. Here is a picture of most of our crap (er, I mean luggage). Add this to Matt and Sarah's luggage, 3 car seats with bases, 1 double stroller, 1 single stroller, and 1 more pack n' play, and I guess you could say we had a lot of stuff.

The first leg of our trip involved flying from Tampa to Houston, TX. That was a 2 hour flight. We had a short layover and then we flew from Houston to Phoenix, AZ. That was a 2.5 hour flight. All in all, traveling went wonderful. Rachel had a couple of crying outbursts that made one aging man give some dirty looks and then find another seat. The babies were great fliers. After arriving in Phoenix, the men had the wonderful job of attempting to arrange all of our luggage into a 15 passenger cargo van, while still leaving room for 7 adults and 3 babies. The first attempt left the van split into two with a wall of luggage between the first bench seat and the rest of the van. After much needed shoving and rearranging, we at least could hear each other talk and see each other. It's a good thing we all get a long so great. It was a 3.5 hour drive from Phoenix to Indio, CA.

Although the drive was long after a long day of traveling, it was really neat to see the geography of this side of the country. It was the first time most of us had been to CA. We stayed in the desert. So instead of lucious green grass, we passed through dusty brown sand scattered with some cacti. We also saw mountains on both sides of us. One thing that surprised me was that there was not one place that we drove that we couldn't see mountains. Being a former social studies teacher, it was neat to experience what I used to teach about.

The house we stayed at was really nice. (Thank you, Mom and Dad.) It was 5 bedrooms, 4.5 baths, had a nice spacious kitchen, and family room. It also had a beautiful pool.

This is a picture of the front of the house. Notice that there is no grass, just dirt.

A closer view. A lot of the homes in the neighborhood where we stayed had little courtyards before you get to the main front door. Matt & Sarah's room was actually off of the courtyard, not in the main house.

A view of the courtyard from the front door

One of the house's best features..the pool & hot tub. Since we actually stayed in the desert, the water was very refreshing. The temperatures got up to 112 during the day so the pool was a nice reprieve.

The laundry room. You might be asking why in the world I would take a picture of the laundry room. Oh, do allow me to tell you. Hannah and Kate developed a lovely case of diarrhea (that we are still dealing with) and so much of our time was spent making friends with the washer and dryer.

The kitchen/eating area/family room

This flower/bush looks extremely similar to a weed that most of you Floridians probably see growing in your yards. I think I am going to give it a try and see if our "weeds" actually produce flowers that look like this. If you click on the picture and enlarge it, you'll know exactly what kind of weed I'm referring to.

Well, that wraps up our first day...come back tomorrow for more adventures of Hannah & Kate.