Christmas Break 2014

Our Christmas break started off with a week in Utah. We were able to see both sides of the family, and even though half of us ended up sick, we still found time for food, games, gifts, and cousin play time. Jane LOVED her cousins. She adored her older cousins Allie and Benjamin, and by the end of the trip she decided that Evan (four months younger than her) was allowed an occasional hug.

Then we headed off to Hawaii! We had a seven hour layover in Seattle, or so we thought. Amelia picked us up from the airport and we went over to my parent's empty house, since they were still in Utah. It was fun to see our babies together. Steph even brought her baby! :) Steph drove us back to the airport and halfway there Jeff looked at our tickets and realized our flight was leaving an hour earlier than we thought. Our flight had changed a month before, which we wrote down on our schedule, and somehow we didn't get the memo that it changed back. We raced over to security only to find out the long line wasn't moving fast enough for us to make our flight. Our only option, according to security, was to ask every single person in front of us in line if we could cut. With ten minutes till the door closed Jeff started asking everyone if we could cut, one by one. It was really quite pathetic. I'm crying from stress and embarrassment, but luckily Jane was looking especially cute. And to our surprise everyone let us through! We ran through the airport like on Home Alone and made it to our gate with just three minutes to spare and walked on to a completely boarded plane. I was never so happy to be on a long flight in my life.

The rest of the week was much less stressful. We spent lots of time playing on the beach and Jane tasted the sand on everyone we visited. We went to the Pearl Harbor Memorial, tide pools, visited the Hawaii temple, lots of walks, and snorkeling. My favorite part about the trip was just being outside. It's funny how much you miss that during the long winters. The hardest part of the trip was not having any bathtubs in the house. Jane did NOT like showers, which was a problem since we went to the beach everyday. Eventually we just gave up and decided she was clean enough.

We started our journey back on Saturday and spent the night in California. The next morning we flew into Denver for our two hour layover. Unfortunately the fight kept getting pushed back three hours every time we checked. There was a big storm headed our way and we were possibly going to get stuck for two more days until the next flight. Miraculously our plane arrived and we made it back home beating the storm by an hour.
We spent a lot of time at the Denver airport leaving Cleveland and coming home. Luckily they have moving walkways, which may have been the highlight of the entire trip for Jane.

The next couple days we had unusually cold weather. Like -38 degrees with the wind chill. Our pipes froze but we couldn't find the freeze anywhere so we thought it was the main line. There was some construction down the street on the water line and we were worried that's where the problem was. Luckily our neighbor downstairs went and looked again and found the freeze in a back room in the basement. I heard the water turn back on while Jane was throwing up. Now that was a miracle. Every time Jane threw up the rest of the day I said a prayer of gratitude our water was working again. A baby throwing up is hard. A baby throwing up without any way to clean it up is a nightmare.

Overall I feel like our trip was a success! Although I can't say I will be jumping at any opportunities to travel with a toddler anytime soon. It's fun, but man it is exhausting!