Our Grand Adventure!

OK, this may be a little bit long, but here goes:

Last week, my mom and I took Cecily and Cordelia to Washington so that they could meet my Grandma. She doesn't travel much anymore and it's really expensive for us to go, so it has been over three years since I had seen her.

I was pretty anxious about the thought of flying with two kids under three, but they were better than I had hoped, much better, in fact.

So on Sunday, after conference, we decided to stay down at Elizabeth's, who lives in Burbank, so that she could drive us to the airport in the morning. Since it was only about 7-8 minutes or so from her place, we thought that was pretty nice.

Cecily had a great time trying on a bunch of Eliza's ("Weeza") hats and shoes:


Cordelia played withh some beads (You can see her teeth!);



After a rather restless night's sleep and a breakfast of McDonald's, we were off to the airport. It took a bit of time to get bags and kids organized, but we made it in and through check-in. The first bump was when Weeza had to leave before we went through security. Cecily had a bit of a meltdown. It was nice that the TSA people were very helpful and it was mostly pain free. We waited a bit to board and we were trying to explain about the plane.

We climbed aboard and Cecily got the window seat. It was cool that in Burbank, you still got to walk out to the plane, that really helped Cecily to understand what we were doing.



I was a bit worried that Cecily might be scared of takeoff and landing, but she loved it. Her reaction was "WOW!" She loved watching everything get smaller. She said "Bye, truck, bye house..." Cordelia slept all the way to Sacramento where we changed planes to go to Seattle. That flight went rather well also. I was very glad.

We then got our rental car, which Cecily loved, and headed up toward Bellingham. We made a couple stops and ended up getting soaked in a rainstorm. We got to the ferry for Lummi Island and Cecily was getting very restless. We finally got to Grandma's house at a little after 9 pm. It was a long day.

We had a pretty good time and the girls charmed my Grandma. Cecily had a little trouble with some of the things at her house. She thought some things were "scary." But she got more comfortable and was very happy.

Tuesday we went shopping and had a quiet, low-key dinner. Wednesday was a little warmer and we went to Frank's beach, and, like her cousins before her, Cecily had a wonderful time throwing rocks in the water.


Cordelia loved playing with the rocks and amazingly did not attempt to eat any of them!


After that, we took a drive around the island and went to dinner at the Shrimp Shack (which is no longer located in a shack, apparently the shack was condemned!).

Thursday, Aurora was able to come down, and after several attempts at getting Cecily to say Aurora, we tried to tell her it was like Princess Aurora from Sleeping Beauty, after that, Aurora became "Princess."

Then, in our regular fashion, we went shopping down at the outlet in Everett. Cecily had a great time shopping with Princess.

On Friday, the sun finally came out and we went out to take some pictures of the girls:





Here's one of Cecily trying to pet Sophie, aka Soapy, according to Cecily:


And here's an obligatory four generations shot:


Rob, Aurora's husband, came down and also had a great time playing with the girls.

Saturday it was time to go home. Things were going fairly smoothly until we got to security and these TSA people were not nearly so nice or helpful. They even took Cecily's blanket away to be scanned, can you believe that? Ugh, that made me mad.

Here are the girls watching planes come in:


Cecily dragged her bag like luggage:


So, this flight was not nearly so good as our previous two. We had a connection through Las Vegas and it was two hours of, well you know what! Surprisingly, it had nothing to do with my children, or any of the several babies and small children on board. Let's just say that there were seven of the most vulgar, drunk and loud adults I have ever been around. It was appalling! Everyone was glad to get off that flight.

The final flight was just fine and there was a very helpful flight attendant, so it wasn't all that bad.

I think Cecily really got the idea of flying, she will point to the sky and say, "Plane, fly, grandma house, going down, WOW!" describing the whole experience. She loved it!

Then Weeza picked us up and we had Panda Express for dinner and then headed home. I was so grateful for getting home, it was a tiring day. I feel like I have just recovered from the trip! It certainly was fun. Thanks so much to my mom for taking us and putting up with the drama. It was worth it to see and spend time with Grandma.

Whew!