Saturday, December 29, 2007

Illinois Trip in Review

Well, we made it back safely!
I already told you about the first few days in my previous blog. So here are the pictures to go with it. Here's Amanda in the Airport (Long Beach) before we took off on the 20th:



We were very surprised by how small and easy it was to get through the Long Beach Airport. There are only 4 terminals, so while ours was pretty busy, as you can see the other three were practically empty. So I let Amanda crawl (and walk) around to wear her out so she'd sleep on the plane ride. It worked like a charm!

Here's Amanda at the waterpark:



Mike brought the Wii with us because his mom likes to play tennis on it. He got a second controller for Christmas, so we were able to play against eachother. Here Mike's playing boxing against his friend Tom:




Meanwhile, Amanda loved to play Mimi's piano. My little music-maker in training :D



Christmas Eve was spent at Mike's sister's house. Amanda played with her cousin Zach's toys



Zach liked to climb on the presents before we opened them:



Cousin Natalie just watched the fun everyone was having:

Christmas morning we went to Church mass (Amanda did great!), and then opened the adult's presents. Christmas day was pretty laid back. We were supposed to have a ham dinner, but someone forgot to take the ham out of the freezer, so we ended up just having pulled pork sandwiches, and had our Christmas dinner the next night.

We flew home on the 27th, which was again pretty non-eventful. The TV's didn't work on our return flight, which sucked, but Amanda did really well again, sleeping through the last 1.5 hours. We landed at 8pm CA time and hightailed it home.

I had to work Friday, but Mike stayed home with Amanda. He set up her new walker she got for Christmas, which I wasn't sure she was ready for. But she surprised me by immediately getting up on it and walking!
Ahhh, my little girl is growing up!

Not much planned for New Years, just having a few friends over to play some games. Hope everyone had a great Christmas!

Friday, December 21, 2007

Merry Christmas from Illinois!

No pictures this time!

We flew from Long Beach to Illinois on Thursday December 20 and surprisingly had an easy time! I booked our seats on JetBlue with an empty seat in the middle, hoping no one would book it and we'd have a "free" seat for Amanda, but alas no luck. It was still unbooked the day before, but sometime between 10:30am Wednesday and 10:30am Thursday, someone booked it. So Amanda sat in my lap the whole time. However, she did really good! She slept during the whole first hour, including take-off, then ate and played the rest of the time. I had her suck on a pacifier during descent and she watched out the window as we landed. She didn't seem to have any problems with her ears!

Amanda's Uncle Mark picked us up at the airport, and we headed to Grandma Mimi's house where a surprise awaited us! Mimi and her Mark announced they were engaged (as of about an hour before)! We are so excited for them!

Friday was spent at home until the afternoon, when we joined Amanda's Aunts (Laura & Kathy) and their kids (Alison and Zach) for a trip to an indoor water park! Pictures are forthcoming after I can download my pictures at home. Amanda had a ton of fun! She played in the shallow baby area, then we took a couple laps around the lazy river before warming up in the hot tub. Did I mention it was a balmy 82 degrees inside?? Such a relief from the 37 degree freezing temperature outside! After a quick dinner, it was back to Mimi's for the annual "neighbors party" where all the neighbors got to meet Amanda for the first time.

Tomorrow several more family members are coming over to meet Amanda, and then it's on to the Christmas festivities.

I hope everyone is enjoying the balmy CA weather that I'm sure is much warmer than it is here, and that everyone has a very Merry Christmas!