Into the Wild Blue Yonder

At the beginning of August, Rebecca and I took a trip out west to visit with my family. It was a wonderful opportunity to see all of my brothers and sisters, my parents, grandparents, a even a few cousins thrown in here and there. I wish Mike and the kids could have been there as well, but they had to start school that week and Mike really didn't have the vacation time to spare, so he held down the fort at home while Becca and I traveled.
I forgot how much fun it is flying with a toddler, across three time zones, while pregnant and battling morning sickness, with said toddler flying as a lap child. Let's just say it isn't something I look forward to doing again any time soon. We got lucky and found a flight with just one stop in Dallas. On the way there, our plane was late taking off so we missed our connection. Unfortunately it was the last flight out that night, so we had to wait until the next day to finish our journey. However, the airlines did a good job of taking care of us- they put us up in a very nice hotel, fed us for 24 hrs, and shuttled us back and forth for free.

 This is the lobby of our hotel in Dallas, and below is poor Becca, up three hours past her bed time, but the desk clerk gave her a cookie, so it was ok.

There was a little play area in one of the terminals that we spent about an hour in waiting for our flight. it was much better than those rows of chairs!

The next day we had our choice of three flights- and it just so happened that my brother was connecting through Dallas that day on one of those flights- how cool was that? So I had some company and someone to carry my luggage (I'll be honest, it was a nice perk!) and Rebecca had a head start on making friends with strangers who kept trying to hug her. He sat in the row behind us and Rebecca kept peeking over the seat to take a look at him, as long as he wasn't looking back. The last hour of that flight was particularly long. She had eaten her snacks, played with every toy, colored every picture, and exhausted the patience of every friendly stranger around. Can you tell I was desperate? We finally landed, claimed a rental car, and made it "home." Then we commandeered the extra bed in my parents' hotel room and went to bed at dinner time.

The most interesting thing about our trip was the scenery out the window. The first day was green- all you could see out the window was green. Trees in the east, farms fields in the Midwest. The next day from Texas to Nevada was brown, red, and gray. I took some pictures of the nothingness, with one lonely river breaking up the desert. Any guesses as to what it was?

The trip home was unremarkable- unless you were the poor soul seated next to us. Rebecca cried and laid on the floor in the aisle the entire flight home until she fell asleep as the landing gear came down. I was too tired to take pictures, but we were very happy to see Daddy and Lenna and Andy at the airport!


And since I was talking about scenery, here is what home looks like. I thought it would be interesting for my East Coast friends who have never been west of the Mississippi to see what people mean when they say "big sky country" or "Way out West".