California-Day 5 (The Adventures of Gilligan & Skipper)

Not too much exciting to report about this day. We just hung out around the house & the pool. Dad, Mom, Michael, Matt & George all went to an aviation museum. Anyway, it was a fun, relaxing day.

Today was the day that Hannah (Gilligan) & Kate (Skipper) earned their nicknames thanks to their cute little hats.

Mommy & Kate
Mommy & Kate

Enjoying the pool

Hannah (our little Gilligan)

Hannah

Hannah & Kate

Hannah

Kate (Skipper)

Daddy trying to reel Kate in for a picture

Kate

Mommy & Kate

Tune in tomorrow for the adventures of our little starlettes...anyone want to guess where we went?

California-Day 4

On Monday we went to the San Diego Zoo. Once again, we arose early. (Side note here: I forgot to explain in my previous posts that California is 3 hours behind Florida time. Not a huge adjustment for adults to make, but think 3 babies that are very routine sleepers. 7:00 here...yes, think hard...you can do the math...that's right, folks...4:00 a.m. Plus, the sun rises at about 5:30 a.m. in CA so you can imagine none of us got to do the sleeping in that you usually do on vacations. The first morning the girls woke up at 4:00, then it got progressively later with a stall out at 6:30, which is decent. To correct the early morning sun waking them up, all 3 babies slept in my parent's walk in closet (which was the size of a small room) where there was nothing but darkness.)



I digress, back to the San Diego Zoo. We packed into the van, this time much more comfortably without all of the luggage and drove about 2.5 hours west to San Diego. The temperature, while still hot, was much more bearable because we were closer to the coast. Here are some pictures:

On the way to the zoo-Hannah

Kate-left, Hannah-right

Driving on the way to the zoo-trying to capture the vegetation

Hannah's new ability-Peek-a-boo. She learned how to lift the blanket over her head and she hides. She doesn't quite get the fact that she has to pull it down, but she enjoys when I tickle her armpits & then gets her to bring the blanket down. She could go on for hours playing this game.

Hannah

Notice the wind turbines by the road. They had massive fields of them generating clean electricity. Not something you see in Florida.

The mountains

Panda Bear-both of them were sleeping.

More mountains

Kate sleeping

Zebra




Polar Bear

Who let these two out of their cages? Uncle Michael & Kate (her new favorite funny face)

Daddy & Hannah

Uncle Matt & Rachel

Lion-they were feeding them

Lioness

Capybara-world's largest rodent

Elephant

No trip to the San Diego Zoo would be complete without souveneirs. Grandma Schaefer bought them t-shirts, which they unfortunately won't fit into for at least another year. Mom & Dad bought them two little monkeys, one is pink and one is purple. Kate laughed when we showed it to her. They aren't really interested in stuffed animals so for the time being, they are hanging from their cribs.

California-Day 2 & 3

We spent Saturday recuperating from all of the traveling. We went grocery shopping, hung out around the pool, and enjoyed watching cable TV (a luxury that 2 out of the 3 families don't enjoy at home).

On Sunday we went to the world's tallest spinning aerial tramway. Bascially, we rode up an aerial tram (the floor spinned slowly-we all decided that we could have done without that part) to the top of one of the mountain peaks. It was pretty neat. We walked one of the trails, which is not easy to do with strollers. The first part of the trail was much smoother than the end part. Luckily, no serious injury to the strollers. Props to George & Matt though because there were some very steep hills and they pushed the strollers.

Hannah

Hannah in the front & Kate in the back

The view at the top

The travel team

Just some trees that we saw along the way

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.

We're back!

So we are back home. However, the girls picked up more than just a California tan. We are headed to the urgent care walk-in clinic this afternoon because they have a case of the runs. It has not been pretty, folks. Once we get settled in, I'll do some posting on vacation. Until then, please pray for Hannah and Kate to feel better.