Belize Day 1 & 2

After a long day of travel, we are in Belize now.  We flew out of Ontario at 6am.  I got about an hour of sleep.  Yvonne, not wanting to bring a bunch of school books here, stayed up all night to read and take notes on them.  The kids got woken up dark and early at 3:45. And of course they decided not to go back to sleep.  Gonna be a long day of traveling.

We have a 2 and a half hour layover in Dallas.  There’s a kids playground there to waste time at.

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One two and a half hour flight down.  One 2 and a half hour flight to go.

We were lucky enough to get a whole row to ourselves on both flights.  Chloe even got her own seat.

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Caleb & Caris 2nd short nap of the day.

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The tired little bunch even slept through the landing.

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From Belize City to Ambergris Caye

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It was a little cloudy, a little rainy, and very humid. 5pm and we’re not even at the resort yet.

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The kids enjoying a view from our balcony.

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The kids chillaxing a warm day.

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Caris got some cute facial expressions.

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A chance to play in the sand.

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Playing on the comfy bed outside.

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Over the River and Through the Woods…

Off to Belize we go.
Mommy and Daddy and Caleb and Caris
Wake up early to go

Over the river and through the woods
Off to the airport we go
But Mommy and Daddy are late again
American Airlines says no

Over the river and through the woods
Off to home we go
The kids are tired, the parents are weary
But we’re going to sleep at home

Over the river and through the woods
Off to Belize we go
We’ll try tonight to go again
Our plans are put on hold

The Suitcase Has Arrived

Yay, we got our suitcase yesterday night around 6:30 or 7PM.  The right one this time!  It came fresh off of a flight from Philly.  I guess our suitcase wanted to enjoy a longer layover than us.  

We’re Back Home!

Last Saturday (despite delayed flights, a 5-hour wait in Atlanta, and a last minute change in our destination airport), we arrived at our resort in Williamsburg, VA in the wee hours of the night. 

 

7 days later…

after enjoying Jamestown and Colonial Williamsburg…

swimming nearly every day…

Caleb dealing with an incessant chesty cough (bad Virginia allergies?)…

Caris catching roseola…

Mommy (with Caris strapped on her chest) slipping on water in the Philadelphia airport…

Running through the Philadelphia airport barely making our transfer to L.A…

Arriving in LAX one suitcase short…

Coming home to cats that appeared to have never left our 100 degree bedroom (how much fur can 2 cats shed in a week?… a lot!)…

 

Yes, we are home.  Pictures and vacation stories to come if we have time.

Virginia Vacation

We’re going to Williamsburg tomorrow for a week. Chris checked into our flights. We have 5 or so hours going to Atlanta, and then we fly into Richmond. Chris just told me that the flight is completely full. He couldn’t even find 3 seats together for our family. Oh my. This could be quite interesting. We were really hoping for an open seat so that we wouldn’t have to hold Caris in our laps the whole time. Now, we’ll just have to see if we can even sit together so that Chris and I can help each other out during the flight. Hmm, 2 children and 2 adults in a 20 square foot area for 5+ hours. The 1 hour car ride after the flights is starting to sound comfy to me. 🙂

On the Road Again

We’re out in Louisville, KY!  This was Caris’ first plane flight ever.  She was great on the flight here.  She fed at take off.  And she fell asleep.  And she slept.  And slept and slept some more.  She finally woke up when we landed almost 4 hours later.

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Caleb was good on the plane as well.  He didn’t sleep the 4 hours like Caris did.  But he was good nonetheless.  He only got his 25 minute nap, but he tried to push on.  He had good company with him though to keep him entertained.

He had is pacifier

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He had Leakless

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He had Chick Hicks

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And he had his media player with Cars on it.

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We got our rental car.  A Ford Edge.  Not a bad car.  Caris seems to like it as well.  At least in the front seat.

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We originally booked a suite from the Galt House since they had special convention rates while we were here.  After traveling with Caleb, we found that staying in a suite is so much better than staying in the same room.  So the suite would have been nice, except we didn’t get one. We got an apartment instead.  You read that correctly.  An apartment.  So initially when Yvonne told me they upgraded us for free to an apartment, I was thinking maybe we get an extra room or something.  Something just a little bigger.  Oh gosh.  Check out this video.

The place has 2 furnished bedrooms, and plus another unfurnished room and “work” room.  That’s 4 rooms we have available to us.  We stuck Caleb in one room with no windows.  It looks like a closet.  And could very well be used for a closet.  But it works well nonetheless.  He sleeps well in there.

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Caris on the other hand isn’t so lucky.  We could have stuffed her in the other room, but we only brought one monitor with us.  We were planning on staying in the same room with her so we didn’t think we’d need a monitor for her.  So no separate room for Caris.  Yup.  It’s not Caleb who gets stuck in the closet, but Caris.  It is a big closet by the way.

We have beautiful view of the waterfront.  Caleb likes the boats.  He greatly enjoys looking out there even when his diapers are barely hanging on.

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General Council (C&MA convention) has been going well.  It just started officially tonight.  We’re all still on LA time zone so that means waking up at 10/11 AM and going to sleep at 11PM.  It works out fine until we’re looking for places open for dinner at 10PM.  Or when I have my 7AM Friday morning breakfast.  Or even tomorrow’s 9AM session.  Not going to be easy getting up in the morning. 

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But it might be easy since Caris’ hasn’t been sleeping that well since we got here.  She’s constantly waking up in the middle of the night and taking short naps during the day.  She must know something isn’t right.  And the crib we got is so dang low it’s hard to put her down in.  Every time we lean over to put her down she’s up wide awake!  So we did the only thing we thought we could do.  Go to Walmart and buy her a bassinet and sleep nest.  It seems to work better, but she’s still not sleeping well.  I think tonight has been her best night of sleeping so far, but it’s only been 2 hours.  Keep sleeping, girl!

We did some vacation stuff.  We went to the zoo today.  Caleb liked it a lot.  It definitely seems more entertaining and kid friendly than the LA zoo.  It’s got a water park where Caleb ran around and I got soaked.

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It’s got monkeys (or gorillas if you want to call them that) who pose at you.

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And it’s got none of the exotic animals kids don’t care about.  It’s perfect.

We got Caleb a backpack before the trip so he can help carry stuff.  It’s cute.  He walked funny without it before.  It just gets even more funny.

Happy Anniversary

OK, so I just read Chris’ post on closet dwelling.  That post came about from a conversation I had with him earlier.  I was the one wondering whether or not our closet in Louisville will be big/deep enough to hold a crib. 

There’s some background to this thinking.  Let me share.

For our anniversary, I took Chris (and Caleb) for a 1-night stay at Paradise Pier Hotel at Disneyland.  We had annual passes to Disneyland and they were about to expire, and we had decided to not renew them.  So, I thought this would be a perfect little anniversary gift.  Plus, they had just re-opened “It’s a Small World” in Disneyland.  I really did consider a suite, but it was a whole lot more money than I was willing to spend.  Sorry Chris.  So, we were in a regular hotel room (meaning we had no extra room for Caleb).  We went on a Sunday night.  We decided not to go early in the day since there’s church in the morning.  We didn’t want to miss service.  But we ended up not getting to the hotel until 4PM or so since some friends decided to take Chris out to a hotdog place in west LA for his birthday (which had been a week or so before this particular Sunday).  So, by the time we checked in, it was already getting late.  Chris makes a decision to keep Caleb up past his normal bedtime so that we can go to Disneyland and see It’s a Small World.  It’s busy there that day.  Some 1000+ member chorus was there with John Stamos narrating the Christmas story.  It’s a Small World is really busy.  We ended up not going on the ride.  Caleb didn’t do so well staying up late.  We missed dinner in order to try to get to the ride.  Big mistake.  By the time we got back to the hotel and got fussy, overtired Caleb down to sleep, most restaurants were closed.  Chris walks to the Rainforest Cafe to get us food at 10PM.  he gets back.  Oh where are we to eat?  Most normal people would eat in their hotel room, right?  Not us.  Not when we have our light sleeper son in the crib next to our dresser.  No way are we waking him up.  Now, we didn’t just forget that we had a light sleeper son.  We did try to plan this out.  There was this huge closet in the room.  But not huge enough.  We almost put Caleb in the closet, but we couldn’t since the crib didn’t fit.  So our boy is in our room.  No lights, no TV, no eating dinner in the room.  Argh.  So, what do we do with our Rainforest Cafe to-go anniversary dinner?  What any normal married couple would do…. We ate it sitting on the floor outside our hotel room.  Yup. 

The positive of all this is that Caleb slept until 7AM or so the next day without waking.  Yay.  And, the hotel staff actually surprised us by decorating our bed for our anniversary. 

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The End of Our Hawaii Trip

Yes, yes… I know… we really are behind in our blogging.  We still haven’t finished blogging about our Hawaii trip. 

Our Hawaii Alarm Clock
I forgot to blog about one story while we on the Big Island with Stan, Bel, & baby Noah.  It’s memorable.  While we were in Hawaii, Caleb was our 6:30AM alarm clock.  No matter how late we put him to bed, no matter how many times he would wake up at night, he ALWAYS woke up at 6:30.  On our last Big Island day, Caleb woke up at 7:30AM.  When we saw the clock, Chris & I cheerfully got out of bed and praised our boy for sleeping in.  The pool opens at 7:30AM, so we decided to go swimming.  On our way to the pool, I pointed out to Chris that it’s a gloomy/cloudy day since it was still a bit dark for 7:30.  We get to the pool.  It’s locked, but somebody’s inside cleaning.  He tells us to come back when the pool is open.  We tell him that the pool is supposed to open at 7:30.  He looks at us and says something like, “It’s 7:30 already?  Oh no!!  I’m running late.”  Then he looks at a pool clock and tells us that it’s only 6:45.  What?!!!  We still have no idea how our bedside clock got changed.  It was right when we put Caleb to bed.  Oh well. 

Our Flight Home
We were running really late to the airport, so Stan & Bel came to help us return our rental car and get checked in quickly.  Our flight was with ATA.  Stan knew one of the ATA worker guys.  He was one of Stan’s high school friends.  Stan tried pulling some strings to get us ahead in this long, long slow line (since we were already late).  He found out from his friend that our flight was canceled (though nobody else in the line knew that yet as the flight was only announced as being delayed).  We got pulled out of the line with our luggage.  His friend got us onto the next American Airlines flight back to LAX.  Yay!  Go Stan.  It’s nice to have our Hawaiian connection.  Only a few were given tickets onto this AA flight.  Most had to wait until the next departing ATA flight (I think that was in the middle of the night or the next day).  And out of the ones who received AA tickets, we were the only ones who had our luggage.  You know why?  Because the Wong family was running really late and hadn’t checked in to our original flight like everyone else already had. 

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Yes, Caleb and I got chosen to be personally security checked.  I guess we just look that dangerous. 

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Caleb slept for only 30 minutes on this plane ride home.  He really had trouble falling asleep and staying asleep.  We tried to make him as comfy as we could, but it was one fussy plane ride home.

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Daddy even tried to help Caleb with his ear pressure by enticing him with a pacifier. 

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We got back from Hawaii on Friday, 3/14/08.  We needed that whole weekend to unpack and decompress from our vacation before Chris went back to work on Monday.  Here’s Caleb helping us unpack.

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Yesterday, I discovered that ATA filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy on April 3rd and ended all of their passenger services to Hawaii.  Good thing this happened after our trip to Hawaii.  We probably couldn’t have afforded to pay for another set of airline tickets.

Big Island Travels

We just spent the last 3 days on the Big Island with Bel, Stan, & baby Noah.  Here are some highlights and funny moments.

  • We explored a lava tube and lots of lava rocks. The volcano here is currently active, so we were trying to go visit the site where you can see lava going into the ocean.  Well, let’s just say the boys were navigating and we found ourselves at a totally different spot.  But I must say, where we went was nice too… and probably heaps safer for the babies.  We saw the area of the last most recent lava activity (about 5 years ago).  Caleb was so fussy after not getting any naps and being in a car all day.  He wouldn’t be soothed in our arms.  Finally I had to nurse him while we walked to the lava site.  It was like carrying a sack of potatoes on a hike.   And, baby Caleb decided to have another poop explosion… this time all over mommy’s shirt and pants and the Ergo baby carrier.  It was quite impressive.

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  • On our trip, Caleb found himself a new toy… baby Noah who lays there like non-moving target.  Poor Noah.  Just wait ’til Noah can roll and crawl well.  He’ll be chasing after you, Caleb.

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  • Caleb fell asleep on the beach.  I put him down in his tent… and he stayed asleep!!!  well, it was for only 25 minutes, but it’s a first for him to go to sleep with lights and sounds without much of a fight.

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  • We wanted to visit a macadamia nut farm.  Stan found one on the internet.  We went there and found this house on a farm.  Very interesting.  Nobody else was there.  We got a nice personal tour of the mac nut trees, kona coffee beans, & avocado & banana trees.  We learned that bananas were originally eaten on the Island by only males.  Females would be killed if they ate this food associated with male fertility.  We found big spiders there.  Chris liked them a lot!  He wanted to take one home with us.

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  • Chris looks mighty cute taking care of 2 munchkins.

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