A Carolina Christmas

Our flight to North Carolina on Christmas day evening went really well! We had a direct, non-stop flight from Salt Lake to Raleigh and it was glorious! With enough snacks and the saving grace of the iPad, Charlie did wonderfully. We arrived in NC around 11pm or so and drove back to my parents' house so Charlie could go to bed after saying hi to everyone. A couple hours later, Trevor and I went to bed too (around 2am EST). Unfortunately, only about an hour or so after that, Charlie woke up crying, so I gave him some Tylenol and helped him fall back asleep. That only lasted for 45 minutes. From about 4:30am on, he was up crying because he was in pain and he was SO tired and just wanted to sleep but he couldn't because his ear was hurting him. He had been getting over a week-long cold that had finally subsided, but flying on the airplane caused fluids to get into his ear canals and he got an ear infection. It was SO sad and hard not being able to do anything to help him until the doctor's office opened at 8am. It was also so hard not to get any sleep after all that traveling. We went to a local instacare when it opened and got the beloved prescription for some antibiotics. Poor Charlie was so tired, he finally passed out in Trevor's arms while waiting for the doctor, just to be awoken minutes later when the doctor came in.

This picture shows the difference between my happy boy on Christmas morning, and my tired, sick boy just 24 hours later. Quite a big change in such a short time. :(

Over the next week, he was on a regimen of Tylenol, Ibuprofen, Zyrtec, and antibiotics to help with the pain, bacteria, and fluids. At least he was feeling back to his normal self within a day of getting the drugs!

Sometime the next day, we got to open our presents. Charlie wasn't too interested in the actual opening part (still!), but he did enjoy the gifts he got, especially the Mickey Mouse figurines from Uncle Mike!

Later in the week, after extended family from my Mom's side arrived in town, a few of us - me, Trev, Uncle Don, Caroline, and Margaret - decided to go to the local UNC basketball game! (We would have gone to Duke, but it's about 10x more expensive!). This was our view from our seats in the upper stands. The game was an easy one for Carolina to win, so it wasn't super interesting, but it was still fun to have the experience!

Trevor was pretty excited to see Michael Jordan's  jersey hanging from the rafters!

And we also were the LAST ones in line to get a picture with UNC's mascot, Ramses! (Darn it, I'm half blinking!)

After the game, we drove around campus for a minute and Trev and I got a couple pictures snapped at the old well on campus. Tourism at its finest. ;)

Other Christmas activities included roasting hot dogs and s'mores over a backyard bonfire, singing Happy Birthday to Jesus and eating cake, eating lots of delicious fresh mex food made by my Dad, and playing lots of games of nertz!

The weather was also pretty nice while we were there, especially compared to frigid, snowy Utah, so we spent a couple hours one day at Pullen Park, letting Charlie play on the playground and ride the carousel and choo-choo train! He really just loved it all, even though he was very ready for a nap when we were done! :)

At some point during the trip we went to Albemarle for a day to visit Nana and Granddaddy and my Dad's side of the family. I really can't remember what part of the trip it happened in. We did so much in just 8 days that it's all a bit of a blur when I try to pull it up from memory! Charlie loved seeing Nana and getting to play with all of her toys.

For New Year's Eve, we (Me, my Mom, my Dad, Mike and Trevor) rang in 2014 rather low-key by watching the Texas A&M vs Duke football game, where Duke lost, sadly, but just barely at the end. And then we watched the ball drop on the big screen TV in my parent's basement while sipping some sparkling cider. We are party animals!

We also visited the Marble's Children's Museum one rainy afternoon for a couple hours. I'm pretty sure Trevor liked it as much as Charlie did! Haha :)

The flight back home also went very well, and fortunately it didn't cause Charlie's ears to start hurting again (thank you Zyrtec and antibiotics!!). Here's Charlie looking so grown up in his OWN seat on the plane:

We had so much fun that it took me a few days to get enough energy to get back to normal life! Sometimes you need a vacation after your vacation, and here's me the next day after getting home in my sweats and no makeup to prove it! :)

Merry Christmas (and New Year's) 2013!

CA Family Road Trip: San Diego

The following day, we woke up in Anaheim and played in the pool for a while in the morning before we had to check out. Here's a video you can watch of Trevor and Charlie playing while I sunbathed. It's pretty cute, especially when Charlie thinks he's drowning from the giant splash hahaha!

Mid-day we drove south toward San Diego and made an afternoon stop at Mission Beach. It was such a gorgeous beach!

It was a little cold in the water (as usual) but Charlie just loved it until he got hit by a bigger wave, and then he wasn't so fond of the water anymore. He kept running back towards the bike path on shore and saying "Bye bye!". So, instead of doing much swimming, we decided to take a nice long walk up and down the beach to look at some of the cool beach houses lining the boardwalk.

Pardon my awkwardness in that family photo. Ahem. :) After strolling the beach, we drove about a mile north to this AMAZING little hole-in-the-wall Mexican place we found on Yelp. I think it's called La Perla Cocina. So hard to find, but totally worth it! MMMMmmmm! I want to go back to California just for that food!

After dinner and then dessert at Cold Stone, we drove to our motel for the night. Here's a phone shot of downtown San Diego at dusk:

Our motel that night was a little Days Inn in San Diego. It wasn't *nearly* as nice as the place we stayed at in Anaheim, but it was only for one night so I figured we'd survive. And we did. ;) The next day we got up early and headed over to the San Diego Zoo!

One of the first activities we did was visit the petting zoo. Charlie loved to touch the goats! There came a point where he tripped and fell in the dirt pee-and-poop-stained ground, and that's when I decided we were ALL done. Yuck!

Next we went to the insect house, which was really small, but by far my and Trevor's favorite attraction! Is there a zoo with JUST bugs?! We want to go there. :)

Here's one part of the beehive at the zoo. The cool part is this tunnel that's attached that allows the bees to exit the building and fly around the zoo pollenating all the plant life! Seriously so cool that the zoo has its own bee colony!

They also had a giant wall that showed an ant colony. This picture is above ground, but you could also see all the underground tunnels and chambers they had created!

From the insects, we ventured into the rest of the zoo. We did stop for a show at 11am that was pretty fun where they had sea lions, tropical birds, dogs, and other animals performing and doing tricks. I think Charlie enjoyed that! :) Afterward, for what seemed like an eternity, but was more like 3 hours, we tried to go to as many spots in the zoo as possible! Trevor and I became scientists for the day ;)

And we saw lots and lots of animals:

After the zoo, we packed up the car and Charlie quickly fell asleep for a late afternoon nap! We started our trek back towards Utah, with tentative plans to stay the night in Las Vegas, which turned into St. George, Cedar City, and then just going ALL the way back in one fell swoop. Ugh! 12+ hours of driving AFTER a full day at the zoo was pure torture, and I wasn't exactly happy with Trevor's decision-making at that point, but he did drive the whole time! I have never been happier to be home in my own bed!

It really was such a fabulous first family vacation! We look forward to planning and executing more successful vacations in the near future! :) I hope you have enjoyed seeing our pictures, even though they were mostly taken on my iPhone. Shame on me! Next time I'll break out the nice camera, promise!

CA Family Road Trip: Disneyland

Warning: Fun picture overload!! :)

Here's Charlie on the shuttle our first day going to Disneyland! Look at that cute morning face! Haha.

Once we got there, we grabbed our "First Time Visitor" buttons for Charlie and headed straight for Fantasyland. Our first ride was Peter Pan, which made Charlie cry (ok, let's be honest, most rides that were remotely dark at any point made Charlie cry!). What a sensitive boy! But we quickly discovered that his favorites were the teacups and especially Dumbo! He's trying to wait so patiently for his turn...

After a few rides, we headed back to ToonTown, hoping to find some Mickey Mouse characters to visit and BOY did we luck out! Pluto, Mickey, AND Minnie! And we almost saw Goofy, but right as we got there they told us that Goofy was going on lunch break. :/ Oh well. Charlie was so funny when he saw the characters. He would get so excited that all he could think to do was sit on the ground and look at them with a big grin on his face!

We were getting near nap time by the time we got to see Minnie and Mickey... so his shyness was a little elevated at this point. :)

Can you tell? He doesn't even know how to handle himself when meeting Mickey!

Family feet shot in ToonTown! Right after this, we decided to shuttle back to our hotel so Charlie could take a nap. He was falling asleep on the shuttle ride back and we worked to keep him awake so he could sleep in his pack-n-play. Of course, we put him down, and 1.5 hours later he STILL isn't sleeping. What!?!? Trevor and I were mad that he was wasting our precious Disney time by not napping, so we just decided to head back, and go figure... he fell asleep ON the shuttle on the way back. We just let him sleep for a little bit in his stroller and things were fine. We enjoyed the rest of the day by letting us adults ride some rides like the Matterhorn. I think we may have also gone on the Nemo ride with Charlie, on which he TOTALLY freaked out, poor thing. No one told us there was a sudden, dark, loud, scary part. He just lost it. Word of advice: when the Disney workers tell you "Oh yeah, it's awesome! All the kids love it! You get to meet all of Nemo's friends!".... just remember that they "forgot" to tell you about the scary part. Hahahaha

We started off the next day in Disney's California Adventure park! When we first arrived, we saw a street show where Mickey was singing and dancing and Charlie thought it was pretty fun! Then we went to the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse live show. This was BY FAR the best thing we did the whole time! With bubbles falling from the sky and getting to see Mickey on stage singing the clubhouse songs, he was a pretty happy boy!

I think my pictures are a little out of order. We took the boat ride in Disneyland near the end of the first day, I think, and then ate at a little New Orleans restaurant nearby.

Okay back to California adventure the second day. We stood in line FOREVER to ride the ferris wheel. And we rode the part that swings back and forth. I was surprised, but Charlie actually liked it :) Then he got to ride King Triton's carousel all by himself (we rode nearby), big boy!

And finally, we bought him his first Disney souvenir - a stuffed Mickey! It was love at first sight...

Charlie was starting to get tired (nearly nap time) so Trev and I decided to take turns riding some "big kid" rides. I went first on the Tower of Terror and I was surprised to remember it was even scarier and more awesome than I remembered it! I came off with an adrenaline high and a bit of a headache! Haha :) Then it was Trevor's turn. I told him to take a picture of one of the photos they took on the ride and here it is. Can you spot him?! Hahahahaha...

We also rode the new Cars ride and it was AWESOME! I was surprised I liked it so much, but the concept where you get to race the car full of people next to you is really fun, and the whole ride was very well created and almost lifelike!

Toward the late afternoon of the second day, we ventured back over to Disneyland to let Charlie ride some of his favorite rides again. And Trevor finally got to ride Indiana Jones (his favorite!). We decided that two days was perfect for our little family! In the evening we stopped by the Legoland shop and I was in AWE at their creations. I wanted to buy everything seeing as I LOVE Legos! We ate dinner at the ESPN Zone in Downtown Disney and then started the long trek back to the shuttles and the hotel.

Charlie had a traveling companion in his stroller and on the last shuttle ride back to the hotel. 

It was really a very fun time! I'm so glad we went, even though lots of people thought Charlie might be too young and not appreciate it. There were times when I'd start to second guess the decision of going (like when he was freaking out on the Nemo submarine), but overall I know he had so much fun and we did too! I'm already wanting to go back. Or go to Disney World! :D