Hillabolt.com

Has anyone missed us?? I don’t even know where to start; I hope this post doesn’t get too long!!

Thursday July 11th after work Kevin and Sophia went to an I-cubs game, which ended up not being such a great idea, since Sophia had no interest in watching baseball, even though she talks constantly about it. Derek hung out with me while I spent the night packing for our big trip. While we were downstairs Derek headed over to the stairs and climbed all the way up…what a big boy!!

Friday afternoon all four of us headed to the airport for our big family trip to Las Vegas and Southern Utah. The kids were perfect angels the entire flight and on the bus to the rental car. Then it turned into a nightmare…It took over a half hour to get signed up for our (already booked) rental car, then we spent another half hour in the super hot, really busy garage trying to find the car, another half hour in line trying to tell the lady our car wasn’t there. Turns out the car showed up while we were waiting in line. So back we go across the hot black pavement to the car, only to find that our second rented car seat was not in the car. This time I was not nice and I went straight to the front of everyone and finally got the car seat. By this time it was rush hour in Las Vegas, so we decided to hit the nearest McDonald’s for some supper. Sophia was tired and cranky, but it got even worse when she decided to share her chocolate milk with Derek, who picked it up and poured it all over his lap and Sophia. After outfit and diaper changes it was back to the car for the 2 and a half hour drive to Grandma and Grandpa’s. We were all so happy when we got to Grandma and Grandpa’s house!! Sophia got a second wind and ran around the house for a few hours, Derek was just happy to get his feet on the ground to crawl around, and Kevin and I were exhausted and happy to let the stress roll off!

We all had a great time while visiting Grandma Marilyn and Grandpa Steve. We spent a day at their friends pool, which the kids just loved. On Monday, we packed a picnic lunch and drove to Zion National park for a day. Zion was gorgeous and we went on a little hike up a paved trail. At the end of the trail was a little river, so we spent some time enjoying the scenery…until it started to thunder. If only we had left 10 minutes earlier!!! We hurried back to the bus, but didn’t make it in time. The sky let out the largest rain drops I’d seen in a very long time!! There were so many people trying to get on the bus, that it took about a half hour to get onto the bus and another hour to make it through the park back to our car. Whew…I didn’t know it rained in the desert!!

We had a great time visiting Grandma Marilyn and Grandpa Steve, but on Tuesday it was time for Kevin and I to head back to Vegas for some much needed alone time, which meant Sophia and Derek got to have some fun with Grandma and Grandpa. As we drove away all we could talk about was how much we already missed the kids…it was the first time we’d ever left them!!

The real reason for the entire trip was because I had a conference Wednesday through Friday at the Mandalay Bay, which was a great hotel. So while I was at the conference during the days, Kevin was…I’ll give you one guess. Yup, in the hotel on the internet. I should be happy that he’s not a big gambler!!

Despite me being at the conference most of the time, we had every night but Wednesday to explore Vegas. The furthest we went was to MGM Grand, but we did a lot of walking and spent some time in almost every arcade trying to win the kids gifts (we just ended up buying them gifts since we never really won anything good). Did you know there is at least 2 Starbucks in every casino?? Thursday we had a wonderful romantic (expensive) dinner and Friday night we got tickets to Kathy Griffin.

On Saturday Grandma, Grandpa, Sophia and Derek came to pick us up. We were so happy to see them. Time to ourselves was great, but we missed them so much. They seemed pretty happy to see us too!! We spent Saturday night relaxing at the Hilton. Grandpa Steve got a great deal on rooms, so Sophia ended up having a room all to herself!!

So the kids slept every night all through the night for Grandma and Grandpa, but Derek welcomed us this morning with a 2:30 wake-up call. Neither Kevin or I could get back to sleep after that. The rest of the day got even better. We got to the airport and through security by 6 am, then a little breakfast and boarded the plane at 7:30. The plane got about 10 ft from the gate and stopped…we sat on that non-airconditioned smelly tin can with 200 sweaty, drunk people for almost an hour when it finally headed back to the gate to deboard. After the long wait for our next plane, we were the first to board, where we sat in yet another non-airconditioned smelly tin can with those same 200 sweaty, now completely hungover and grumpy people for another hour before we finally got into the air. Since Derek has a very bad cold and somewhat fever, he was completely miserable and Sophia spent half the time screaming and kicking the chair in front of her. Once we took off the kids were pretty good as long as we kept food in front of the. It was a pretty challenging flight, but we made it (3 hours late)!!

All in all it was a wonderful trip. Thank you so much to my wonderful parents for showing us such a great time while we were there. And most of all for watching the kids while we had some alone time!! We truly appreciate everything you did to make the trip a great one. And a huge thank you for Grandma Robin for taking our furry child, Lexi, for the week. I know she had a great time too!!

I’m sure looking back we will only remember the good times and not the bad experience of our travel days. However, Kevin and I decided that we will not be flying anywhere for family trips until the kids are out of diapers!!