Vacation Days 1 and 2

I'm determined to do short blogs more often while on this trip so that I don't fall behind and so that it's not one huge post at the end. Unfortunately I don't think I can do photos or video until we get home, though.


We've now had two full days of our vacation. Tuesday was our travel day and it went smoothly without any complications. We spent the day packing and getting ready. It was a lot to get ready for a 3 week trip for a family of five. Monday was a busy day of catching up after the whole weekend of the dance show, having company staying with us, etc. Tons of laundry! And it took the whole day of Marlon, Harrsion and my father in law Bernie to get Harrison's stuff ready for sleep away camp, which he leaves for the day after we get home. Bernie spent 3 hours ironing "Harrison Boarnet" labels on everything! (sorry if I already mentioned that in a post, I forgot if I did!)

Anyway, our flight was at 5:05 p.m., right out of Orange County so that was easy. My mom packed us a bunch of snacks for the plane (from the Bistro at her place) and that was good because we didn't have time to eat in any of the airports. We flew from OC to Dallas, then Dallas to Austin. We noticed that all three airports seemed much less crowded than usual - must be the economy. The plane flights were relaxing - we played cards, read books and the kids played their DS games.

By the time we arrived, got a rental car and drove to Marlon's parents house, it was 2 a.m. so all we did was go to sleep. We slept really late yesterday (Wednesday). Then, the kids set up their new Wii. My sister and brother in law generously bought them the game system, all the controllers and accessories and some games for Hanukkah but we hadn't been able to find the darn thing in any store. It was always sold out. I called daily for awhile, then I gave us and figured eventually I'd just see it somewhere, which I did about a month ago. But I wouldn't let them take it out of the box until after school was over, then we didn't have time with all the dance shows. We bought the carry case and packed it all up and harrison carried it on the plane and we brought it here. It only took 3 calls to the Nintendo customer service people (who were great!) to get it up and running and they played almost all day. I didn't put any time restrictions on their playing yesterday because they had waited patiently so long to buy it and be able to play it. Plus it's an interactive and physically active game system, not like the videogames which are solitary and inactive. They love the bowling, tennis and baseball best.

While they played Wii, I unpacked and organized our stuff, read one of my books (I brought five and am so excited to read them all!), and just hung out with marlon, who also basically did nothing all day except read and relax (very, very unusual for him!) We interspersed the day with reading (the kids too), a couple of board games, visiting with Marlon's grandmother Meme (who we hadn't seen since October!) and eating of course.

So far today we slept in again, had breakfast, and while the kids played Wii, I spent some time online looking up different things to do that we haven't done before (or in awhile), and printing out coupons. I have most of the days scheduled for the rest of our time here, but I'm not going to tell you about it because I'll just be blogging about what we do after we do it!

That's all for now -- keep checking regularly for more updates. I'll try to blog every day or two.

Hope you're enjoying your summer so far. I - and everyone else -- would love to read about YOUR adventures too, so leave a comment!!! :)