California, Here We Come!

We had the very special opportunity to fly out to California and spend Thanksgiving with all of my family!  My brother has a beautiful house in Rocklin (outside Sacramento), and he and his wife invited everyone to stay at their home.  We were all so excited for this get-together, as they happen too rarely.  I was especially anxious to have Eli get to play with his cousins!

Our plane flew out of Indy early Thanksgiving morning.  I had been excitedly talking about going on an airplane for a while with Eli, so when I had to wake him up that morning, he practically jumped right up and was happy to get on our way to the airport.  : )  Eli LOVED everything about flying.  He loved the huge airports, the crowds of people (I can't tell you how many people he just walked up to and said "hi," or patted them on the leg.), the escalators, seeing the big planes driving around, looking out the window in our aisle, etc.  After all, your first time flying is a BIG deal.  : )

We were SO lucky, because my parents, sister, and bro-in-law flew with us, too!  Talk about AWESOME help!  I'm so, so glad we didn't have to do it by ourselves.  Even though Eli did so very well, it was a huge load off our shoulders to not be the sole entertainers and have help carrying and managing everything.

I filled a big bag of goodies to keep Eli occupied on our flights.  We had two two-hour flights, with a 3-hour layover in Denver.  Stickers, books, a dry erase coloring board, snacks (the complimentary drink in a little cup with a straw was a huge hit), foam puzzles, etc. all worked their magic charm, and he was never too wiggly or at all fussy.  He napped for most of the second flight (fell asleep eating a cracker, after David and I pretended to be asleep so he'd get the idea), which was very much needed after such a long day and a three-hour time change!

At airport...Eli wanted to be weighed, too!  David also
pushed him around on the cart!

Checkin' out the ground below...

It was such a wonderful reunion to all be together again!  We definitely had a lot to be thankful for.  My brother's wife, Jeri, did all of the cooking and preparing and everything was absolutely delicious, and we had some very happily full bellies!  : )  Eli, of course, ate nothing but his roll (Last year he loved the turkey and sweet potatoes.  Gettin' extra picky in his older age).

The cousins all seemed to have fun together (minus Eli being a bit of a bully and pushing Holly and Tori every time he'd see them the whole four days!  They're both 2 1/2.  Maybe he doesn't like girls his age?  He did really well with the older kids and babies).  Such a funny picture of them!  L to R Zach holding Noah, Annie, Eli, Holly, Gwen holding Ben, and Tori.

That evening after the kids were in bed, we adults wrote out things we are thankful for, stuffed them in our turkey bag, and once the turkey was full we sat down and read aloud each other's thankful items.  Lots of sweet things shared!

We Indiana folks headed to bed pretty early that night.  We never could get used to the time change, and always woke up around 4 or 5 in the morning!  Ha!  Eli was a doll, and slept well (even in the same room as us) every night.  He didn't get his naps while we were there, but was still able to get 12 hours of sleep every night and stayed happy.

It was a great start to a great trip!