We left on October 7 at 4am. Yep. We figured the kids would all fall right back asleep. Nope. They were awake all the way to Wendover, where we stopped for our first bathroom break. We got back on the road and then they all fell asleep. This includes the two 1-year olds. I will say Mason had a great time on the drive there and back, because there were actually kids in the backseat with him! Oldest child problems...
After stopping for breakfast, lunch, and other stops, we arrived around 5pm in good ol' Pittsburg, CA! The kids, especially the babies, were excited to be out of the car finally! Kelly's older three ran around after their grandma (my aunt Florence), and Mason and Michael had a GREAT time playing in the water feature in the front yard. Cute boys! There is a video of them splashing and laughing, and it's adorable.
The next day, my mom drove up from King City to pick me up and drive me back! We stopped in Watsonville where my parents would soon be moving to (where we spent Christmas). We stopped at the outlets in Gilroy, of course, before we met up with my dad, because Wednesday is Grandparent's Day at Carters and my mom had to buy some stuff for Mason and Oakley! I'm not going to argue with that! It was a beautiful day out, and we had a blast! Mom also took me to the Banana Republic outlet there, and we shopped for ourselves a bit :) My mom is the best!
We stopped by and said hi to my dad, and met his boss, and she showed us the goats that were on the property! Mason thought that was pretty cool.
Dad sent us home with a flat of freshly picked raspberries. When I say freshly picked, I mean the pint I'm holding in my hand had been in the field about 2 hours before that. Crazy awesome!
Then we all headed home, grabbed some dinner, and hung out the rest of the evening! Mason was pretty spoiled the nights my dad was home, he got to play games on the iPad with Grandpa <3
Blaze was excited to see me, as usual...
We enjoyed some nice foggy weather in the mornings, I love CA fog!
We walked in the evenings with my mom
and played at the park a couple times!
We also played with the dogs during the day. Mason wasn't a big fan. They are pretty big dogs...
We also sent lots of silly pictures to Daddy. Here's a couple:
Haha Mom, I got the remote!
Mason kept finding this baby picture of my sister, Jenny, and carrying it around the house. It was so sweet! Aunt Jenny is the coolest.
Friday night, Mason came down with a stomach bug. He didn't have a fever or anything, just didn't feel well and was moaning and kinda cranky. He also threw up every night. Poor guy. But during the days he seemed fine!
On Saturday, we went to Morro Bay to eat lunch and walk around! I love it there, it is so pretty! Going this time is what made me want to take Sean when we went at Christmas, which we did!
Can you see the seal?
We finished there, bought a few souvenirs, and headed back to my dad and drove back to King City.
Mason was pretty much done with being in a car all the time. Foot in eye...
On Monday, the day before we were supposed to go back to Pittsburg to meet up with Kelly again, Mason was still sick and I thought I was going to have to stay longer. Sean and I talked on the phone a lot that day, and Tuesday morning, and we both felt like it would be okay and I should follow the original plan. And Mason was fine!
The rocking chair my mom rocked all her babies in :)
Mom, I'm ready for my walk!
(He did this all himself)
But still cranky about being in the car. So I sat in the back with him on the way to Pittsburg, smooshed between a lot of (freshly picked) strawberries, feeding him popcorn and surprising him with bites of PB&J every now and then. Sneaky mom haha. At the end I had to give him a tootsie roll pop to keep him happy.
We stopped to say bye to my dad.
By this point in the trip, with Mason being sick, I had run out of his special formula. I thought he would be okay, but he would not fall asleep that night. It was awful. I ended up having a breakdown on the phone with Sean because it had been such a hard week with Mason, and he wouldn't go to anyone else for me to have a break. I finally had someone take me to the store to get more formula so he would calm down. He finally went to bed around 11pm I think, which is way late for him.
We were up again on the road at 4am again, this time the kids fell asleep a little quicker. We were driving through the first rain storm CA had seen in months. We finally drove ahead of it, and by the time we got to Reno we could look back and see a rainbow! And then the storm close behind, so we hopped back in the car and kept driving to keep away from it!
We stopped in Winnemucca for lunch, and let the kids run around in a McDonald's play place. It was Mason's first time, and he had a blast! I was pretty grateful for Sarah and Katie at that point, I said, "you have Mason and you have Michael. Make sure they don't go anywhere they will get stuck or hurt." And they did great!
Can you see me Mom?
We finally got back to Riverton around 7pm, we rolled in listening to Defying Gravity from Wicked. Kelly and I were singing at the top of our lungs while the kids listened to their own movie or whatever in the back.
We unloaded the car, and then Sean, Mason and I headed down to Provo!
Poor Sean, he was supposed to leave the next day for a conference in southern CA, but I made him stay home because I was so frazzled. Ah well. All in all, a great trip, aside from the flu bug. Poor Mason. It's been the winter of sicky for us.
