The great Road Trip....

So I have the best husband, because when I come up with totally insane ideas he totally goes along with them.  :) 

So here was the crazy idea this time - Lets take the kids on a 5 week road trip across the Western United States. Ok, so really it started smaller and grew into that.   It gets better, because Jake obviously couldn't take a whole month off again, he did that in December so he spent the first week and the last half week with us and I road tripped with all three kids the rest.  So here we go the great road trip....

We left San Antonio July first about 4pm, when Jenny and Jake both got off work.  Oh, Jenny thought it would be fun to drive 24 hours in a minivan with 3 kids, just to spend the weekend in Cali.  That's why we love Jenny.  We were making good time.  Speed limits are awesome in Texas.  We were trying to make it to El Paso, but the hurricane was blowing up the Rio Grande and that made driving in the dark a little difficult.  So we stopped in Von Horn.  Since we didn't have reservations and all the other road warriors were stopping because of the storm the motels were pretty booked.  We'd stop, Jenny would run in and then come out and say they had no rooms.  After about 3 times Emma exclaimed, "Why in the world would they build all these hotels out here and not put any rooms in them?"  We did find one, slept a few hours and had a great free breakfast in the morning.

We made it to El Paso the next day (July 2).  It was really cool, because I-10 is the border between the US and Mexico.  Because of all the crazy drug cartel  stuff going on we didn't cross....in fact it looked like no one was crossing.  There was a big fence on the border and Nate told us he knew how to get to Mexico, "you run over, climb the fence and swim the river"  We tried to get him to repeat it on video, but no go.  Here is the what we got though.

After El Paso it was a whole lot of New Mexico and Arizona.  I had said the only place I didn't want to live was New Mexico, but I just added Arizona that day.  I think it was 111 as we went through Phoenix.  We ate lunch at McDonald's and then finished the drive into California.

Nathan discovered the joy of peeing on the side of the road and he did his part to travel green and replenish the local water supply in every state we drove through. 

As we approached California we were singing songs that had California in them.  Shortly after crossing the border, but before LA, we stopped on the side of the busy freeway for Nate to pee again.  Jenny needed to also, so she opened the door to block the view and was going.  Nate finished first.  He and I climbed in the car where Jake proceeded to reverse the car - so Jenny was running with her pants down trying to keep from mooning everyone....I'm sure she might think twice before road tripping with Jake again.

We spent the night in Rancho Cucuamunga with Taylor and Tyler.  We went to a great Chuck E Cheese for dinner and the kids had a blast.  We loved the cool weather, but Nathan was freezing the next morning.  Everyone was looking at me crazy when he was shouting at the gas station he was freezing and it was like 80 out. 

We had giant doughnuts for breakfast.  The kids loved them.  I couldn't believe Jake actually got them....for the future sprinkle doughnuts are really messy in the car.  :)

 

We were hoping to stop and see the Ware's but by then adding more hours to go out of the way seemed like sheer torture. So we booked it to grandmas house. We got there about 3 that day. We made great time, had a great time and the kids were great! Little Ian only cried twice the whole drive.  Here he is the day we got to grandmas...he was just on the verge of crawling.

After being in the car that long we didn't waste any time getting into Grandmas pool.

I love how the swim cap pushes his face all scrunchy.  The swim cap is the only way to keep the plugs in, which he has to wear because of the tubes.

Sunday (July 4) we went to church with Grandma and then went to Coloma with Grandpa and Andrea.

Coloma is where Jake and I went on one of our first dates.

We wandered around and hat alot of fun exploring.

Andrea and Nathan

 It was the 4th of July.

Nate and Nate

 That night we did fireworks at Grandmas house.

 After buying fireworks in Texas we couldn't believe how expensive they were in California.  We should have bought them in Texas and illegally taken them in.  It was seriously ridiculous.

 Emma was shaking it the whole night.  She cracks us up. 

 Jackie and Paul and their guys were there too!

We did have a chuckle that Jenny had lived in Texas to long, because she was calling it a 4th of July Fiesta.  :)

Here is Emma dancing...I don't think it really needs or could have and explanation...

The next day we drove up to Placerville to the American River Berry Company. It was a great pick your own berry place.

July 5:  Heading out to pick Berries......

 Jake loved the black berries.  His hands were dripping with the juice.

 Ian liked picking with big Jake.

 I wish I had pictures of Emma and I picking cherries.  I had her standing on my shoulders to reach them.

 They had every kind of berry.  Black, Marion, cherry, blue, apricot, logan, and a ton more...

 The berries were delicious - just ask Jake

 We wore ourselves out.  Good thing they had comfy swings.

 We had a picnic over by the pond and had berries for dessert or appetizers.....

 It was gorgeous, fun and the berries were cheap!

 The cousins had a lot of fun together.

Sometimes you have an itch in your ear and you just have to scratch it...

So just in case we hadn't done enough yet, we decided to squeeze in Emma's birthday party. 

to be continued...

Tubes

Poor Nathan has had way mor ethan his fair share of ear infections. It got to where we couldn't even go a month between infections. So to the ENT we went and Dr. Nathan - Nate loved that they had the same name. It was when we visited him that they told us Nathan failed his hearing test. They said he had so much pressure behind his ear drums that they couldn't move at all. Poor little guy. So we scheduled to surgery for 6 weeks out and in those six weeks the longest he was off antiiotics was 7 days. No doubt he needed the surgery.

Here he is getting ready for surgery.

Before any surgery you need two stickers.  Nate had all the surses charmed and I'm sure he could have talked them into anything.

Because he was way to cute not to have a back shot of his little gown.

  He had to take all his dinosaurs to the hospital with him.  Here he is getting them all tucked into bed.

 Daddy took the morning off to come with us.

 Remember when I said Nate could have talked the nurses into anything?  Well he talked them into hats for him and his brother. 

The surgery went great, but since Nate was knocked out for it he didn't remember it and he was very upset that we were leaving the hospital without getting his surgery actually done. 

The good news is that it has been 4 months and we haven't had a single ear infection - for Nathan.  Ian has already chalked up 2 in that time. 

Little Frog

Here is a little frog we found after one of the swim meets. It was adorable. I'd never seen one this tiny.

 We played with it for quite awhile.

Swim Team

This spring Emma started swim team.  It was alot of work!  From the get go they were swimming laps for 30-45 minutes a day.  She was exhausted, until she built up the endurance.  She was so cute out there and she placed in every single event.  Every meet she took huge amounts off her best time.  We would have loved for her to swim in our regional meet, but it was on Sunday, so maybe next year it will be on a Saturday.

 Swimming was a great sport for Emma, because the cut off is right before her birthday, so she is the very oldest in her age group, instead of the youngest like all the other sports.  So, that meant she was swimming in the 4-6 year old group.  Some of the other kids came up just above her waist. 

 I wish I had a video clip of her jumping off the blocks...we are still working on our dive.

 She did backstoke and freestyle and then a bunch of relays.  One meet she even did the butterfly in one of the relays.  Go EMMA!

 I know, she is going to love this picture when she's a teenager.

 If their relay started on the shallow end they did an inwater start....here she is waiting.

 Here is another one...

 There she goes!

 At one of her first meets....I know its hard to tell the stroke, but by the end of the season you could tell she was doing freestyle.

 She got a slow start on this one, but quickly caught up.