Family Vacation: Day 1- The Joys of Traveling with 3 Small Children

Well, we've been back from our latest and greatest family vacation for nearly 2 weeks now and I'm just getting around to posting about it.  It was so fun, amazing, wonderful and EXHAUSTING!  I really needed a vacation to recover from my vacation but since I never got one, I feel like I am still in the process of getting my head screwed back on straight. 

I figure that if I try to put the whole vacation in one big post, it will never get done.  Therefore, you all get the day by day, play by play.

So, anyways, a little over two weeks ago we set off on our family vacation to "the happiest place on earth":

DISNEYLAND!!!

My awesome parents were good enough to treat us to this amazing vacation.  And I guarantee there is no way we could have done it without them.  But the first leg of the journey had to be attempted on our own.

Here we are at the SLC airport waiting for our flight.

I suppose the worst part of air travel with small children is hauling all their supplies.  Hence the scarceness of pictures.  I decided that attempting to take a picture with my teeth since my hands were so full was not worth breaking my camera on the first day.  Not only did we have all the bags of everyone's clothes but we also had carry-on bags for everyone and car seats and a stroller.  I already feel like I'm packing enough stuff for a week long vacation when I'm just heading to church, imagine when I really have to pack for an actual week long vacation.  Luckily we flew Southwest and they are super family friendly.  They don't charge extra to check as many bags and kid junk as you want.  Good thing.  But that didn't mean we got rid of enough stuff to get through security unscathed.  You even have to take sleeping children out of strollers and car seats so they can run all your stuff through x-ray machines.  Lovely.  Call me backwards, but I'm in favor of racial profiling simply so my lack of terrorist characteristics would help me not to have to unpack all the bags I spent hours trying everything but magic to fit everything into in the first place. 

The kids' first airplane ride was extremely uneventful. I would have thought they would be super excited, or maybe even nervous or terrified, but they really weren't. Maybe I should have hyped it up more beforehand. Personally, I LOVE flying. Maybe it's because it brings back fond childhood memories of heading off to my grandparents' homes or going somewhere with the possibility of having a very un-ordinary day. I suppose the thrill of flying has never worn off because I don't do it often enough for it to become overly boring. (I obviously have never been on a flight more than 8 hours long). Nor do I fly for business- I'm sure that would totally spoil the fun. But really, who doesn't love being waited on and given snacks and drinks as they stream through the skies at almost 600 MPH all the while never needing to keep your eyes on the road in order to make it there alive. I especially love the thrill of take off. Eve and Jack happened to agree that that part was pretty cool. Eve got the window seat- which I think should be mandatory for any first time flier. Unfortunately since all our kids were first time fliers and they couldn't all get a window seat, we opted to give her the coveted place since she was the most likely to remember the vacation at her age. Poor Jack and Porter, they'll have to wait for their turn. We ended up towards the back of the plane with a bunch of other families headed to the Magic Kingdom. Everyone was in a good mood and even the little babies were pretty quiet and well behaved. Jack and baby Porter slept the whole time and Eve just colored. I didn't even have to drug them! Thankfully there was an open seat next to me so they let me keep Porter in his car seat and he just snoozed away. I was worried that he would be cranky from the changing air pressure and everything and I would have to try to nurse him without flashing everyone around me. Surprisingly, he was a perfect angel. I think the constant hum of the engines reminded him of the fan we run in his room and it seemed to work better than Benadryl.

Thankfully once we got to California, my parents were there to meet us.  I really don't think Kole and I would have ever attempted such a vacation without the help of others.  I'm sure our new equation of 3 kids to 2 adults would have ended in an episode of "When Vacations Attack."

The first thing we did when we left LAX Airport was head right to the beach 5 minutes down the street.

It wasn't a sunny or warm day in any way but Eve still ended up taking a little swim the ocean first thing. And doesn't she look so happy about it?

Where's the baby?

Next we headed to our hotel.  It only took three times as long to travel the same distance as it would in Utah.  California traffic is... great if you like a lot of time to sit in your car and reflect upon where else you would rather be- not so great when you would actually rather be at your destination.  Say what you will about Utah, but whether the season be winter or road construction, the traffic is still better than California. 

Our hotel (The Fairfield Inn) was nice and close to our main event.  Right across the street, in fact.  We could even see the Tower of Terror from our room.  If I had some binoculars I could have watched all the little people scream their heads off as their elevators plummeted down.

Now, all you moms probably know what it's like to sleep with a new baby in your room- all the little baby snores, grunts, and gurgles ALL NIGHT LONG.  You probably also know how dads seem immune to these noises while moms are always just on the verge of wake in case they need to jump out of bed and be all motherly.  Now multiply that by 3, minus a beloved sound drowning fan (as anyone who knows Kole knows he cannot sleep without a fan so really it's like having 4 kids to worry about) = Needless to say, before we went to bed on night #2, we found a Target and paid twice as much as we would have in Utah for "a good night's sleep." But it was so worth it.

Day 2- soon to come.