Picture taken of the whole family! Missing Tommy, Kelsy and Charlotte
On Thursday, June 17th, the day after school got out, Josh and I and the four little ones flew out of Reagan National Airport (thanks, Aunt Ellen, for driving us) and headed on out to good old California, where my Parents and Josh's Parents and some other family live. It was a long day- flying across the whole country!
We took 6 sandwiches, 6 empty bottles of water to be refilled past security, one big, black checked-in bag, 4 small sleeping bags (which we didn't end using but they carried their pajamas anyways), 3 big carry-on bags, one purse and one box of sees candy acquired at the airport (my favorite!).
We had two legs of the flight- 2 hours to Chicago, a long walk across the airport carrying said bags, sleeping bags and chocolate, and another 4 hour flight into LAX. Upon arriving at 2:30 pm or 5:30 pm Eastern time, what amazed the kids the most were the palm trees. They had never seen them (well, they had but that was 5 years ago and Asher wasn't born yet). They called them "Hawaii trees" "Pom-Pom trees? (Palm?)" and "Coconut trees" (taken from chicka-chicka-boom-boom). I kept using the word Palm Trees in a sentence. "Look at that big palm tree." and "I see another palm tree." When we left LA nine days later someone said "Look at that Hawaii tree." "Yep," I replied. "That's a Hawaii tree." I had given up.
We drove 3 hours in good ole LA traffic- instead of 1- ( don't get me started- it was 2 pm in the afternoon- I guess everyone was graduating from High School or something) and landed at Gma. Betty's house- my Dad's Mother.We had yummy pizza and famous fruit salad and the kids cooled off in the slip-n-slide. We got to see Gma Betty, my Mom and Dad, Molly, Doug and their kids Anna (9), Paul (7) and Christian (5) (missed you Charlotte! forever our Angel), Larissa, Jon, Shayla (3), Mitchell (4 mo.), Christine, Kalea (5), Isaiah (3), Dax (5 mo.), Amy, Fox, Cash (3), Coco (1.5), David and his wife Amber,Uncle Doug and Aunt Sheelah. It was a Family Reunion! We met last year, but in Utah. We had everyone there but Tommy (who was in D.C. for training and Kelsy). The picture above is taken by Molly's husband, Doug. Didn't he do a great job capturing 30 people?
We had an AWESOME time. Expect a blog about day 2-6 tomorrow. In shortened form.
Love, Megan
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