[The kids right before leaving Applebee’s to get in the car again. A waitress commented on how good our kids were about standing up against the wall and having their picture taken. Our waitress was impressed with our children’s behavior in the restaurant. I was too. After all, they had just been in the car for 8 hours!!]
Wednesday, November 12 was suppose to be a busy day. Scott took the week off because we were planning a trip to Brawley to visit with the Thompson side of the Family. Scott’s youngest brother had just gotten home from his mission and so we were going down to play and enjoy family time. We were going to use Wednesday as our pack and plan day, then leave Thursday night after Jaime and Alix’s classes. Alix’s class got canceled and Jaime meets often enough that missing one dance class won’t hurt, so we decided to leave Thursday morning. Tuesday night I realized that we could miss the things scheduled for Wednesday and that would be ok too. Since the kids were dying to go (they were actually driving me nuts with their excitement!!) we decided to leave on Wednesday whenever we finished packing. We pulled out of Fremont at 10:30 am. We had no traffic at all during the first part of the trip. We made pretty good time. We stopped in Buttonwillow and had some sub sandwich’s and let the kids stretch and play. After an hour we loaded back in the car and hit the road again. We hit L.A traffic pretty hard. We stopped off at a Wal Mart to get a few things that we had forgotten (thanks to Scott’s iPhone that has maps on it). It was still pretty ugly on the freeway so we found an Applebee’s (thanks to iPhone again) and had dinner (thanks to a gift card from a friend after Keri’s birth). After eating, playing and getting gas we managed to kill another hour or so and got back on the freeway. It was smooth sailing the rest of the way to Brawley. We got in about 10:20pm. Not bad for all the stops we made and the traffic we hit. We were welcomed with lots of hugs and kisses and smiles. Grandma and Torry waited up for us, the men folk had an early morning so they retired to bed. Thinking that Scott’s older brother Phillip was going to arrive later in the night, we set up the tent that was going to be our sleeping quarters for the next few nights. Scott’s parents have a NICE tent and the weather in Southern Cali was VERY nice. So we got the tent up, the air mattresses blown up and the kids to bed by 11:30pm. Not bad really!! Keri was assigned a playpen in the house. We all went to sleep happy and exhausted.
Thursday, November 13 was a chill out day! We got up late (well I did!!) and showered late and just enjoyed being with our kids and having no responsibility! Phillip showed up about 10am. We took all the kids to the park about noon. When we got there they were trimming the trees and mowing the lawn. No biggie, right? It was being done by the inmates of the local prison. We risked it and played anyway. They got a new play structure at the park and we were all excited to play on it. We were there about an hour and then we realized it was too HOT! While we were walking back, grandma was on her way to play with us. Instead, grandma and the grandkids went swimming. The water felt like ice but the air was hot, so the kids had a good time. Jaime and Alix really got into it and were jumping in and swimming under water (crazy kids!!). After an hour of that they all got dressed again, watched a movie to relax and then did more playing. We had a yummy dinner made by Torry of pulled pork and veggies. Grandpa left after dinner to announce a football game and we put our kids to bed. They slept really well in the tent. They fell asleep the moment their head hit the pillow and slept all night. It was WONDERFUL. It was very cool to sleep under the stars. The tent had a mesh top and so you could see all the stars and the moon. It was awesome to fall asleep star gazing.
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