Texas

At the end of May, Charlie's sister had her baby, which wasn't due for another month. The baby was fine, but Cassandra had some health problems, so me, Sam, and Charlie's mom decided to go to Texas to help her out with her other kids. We didn't want a repeat of last year's trip, so we planned to be there about 4 hours early Of course, things went a lot smoother than last time, and we were through check-in and security in about 30 minutes, and that's a high estimate. This meant we had about 3 1/2 hours to kill in the airport. I think Sam remembered it from last time. He was very excited to play on the moving sidewalks and run around everywhere looking for stuff. I must have been having nightmares the night before about missing our flight, because I was convinced we were going to miss this flight even though we were there with plenty of time. So for the last hour, we camped next to our gate. This didn't please Sam too much. He was ready to get on the plane and go. He saw lots of people getting on their planes and just kept asking when it was our turn.

Finally, our plane arrived and started boarding. When we got up to the ticket counter, the person scanned our tickets, but there was a problem. We had been assigned row 26 in the plane. Unfortunately, there were only 25 rows in the plane. Our assigned seats didn't exist. I was sure that we were not going to be able to get on this plane. Luckily, the plane wasn't completely booked, so they assigned us different seats and we were able to go.

Sam was so excited to finally be getting on the plane, but then he started getting impatient for the plane to take off. I guess he couldn't understand that everyone needed to be in their seats before we could leave. And he wanted the plane to blast off! We finally started moving, so Sam was a happy boy again, but we still hadn't "blasted off" yet. He kept asking why the plane was taking so long to blast off. He was really excited when the plane finally took off. The plane ride went pretty good. There was some turbulence, but other than that, everything went fine. Sam fell asleep, which was nice because he was getting kind of rowdy.

Sam had so much fun with his cousins. He couldn't get enough. Here are some pictures of a park that we went to on one of the days it wasn't burning hot. Texas weather is a lot different than Laramie weather :) Sam spent the entire time chasing his cousins everywhere. I was actually quite surprised when he climbed all the way up into this rocket. He is usually very terrified of heights.

We spent some time in the back yard. They played a few games of tag...

Then played on the swingset...

And then decided to have a fight with the cut grass.

Carissa was saying, "Sam! Turn around! Look out! Sam!!"

With the humidity and the sweat, the grass just stuck to Sam. There was quite a mess to clean up afterwards :)

This was in the doctor's office. Sam thought it was pretty cool.

We had a day at McDonalds for play group. I think they were playing some mix of hide and seek and tag.

Sam loves wrestling, and he had plenty of people to wrestle with.

Here is a picture off Sam with all his cousins.

And here's the new baby.

I have very much decided we are not living in Texas. Not only was the humidity bad, but there are just too many people. When we first arrived, I had to drive through Dallas right during rush hour, which wasn't very fun. And then on the way back to take the rental car back, I almost got lost. And Texas interstates aren't nearly as easy to navigate as what I'm used to. Here, if you accidentally take the wrong exit, there is another on ramp about 500 feet away. In Texas, if you get off, it takes you about a mile and tons of turns to get back on. Not fun. The boys all crashed in the back seat. Good for me, because then I didn't have to try to concentrate on driving and them at the same time.

I wanted to be sure to be at the airport in plenty of time, which we did. It took us about 15 minutes to get through check-in and security, so we had hours to kill yet again. This time wasn't as easy because I had to take our carry-on's with me everywhere, which got tiring pretty quickly. Luckily, I had my iPod, so that kept Sam entertained in one spot long enough.
While we were gone, there was a big forest fire near Fort Collins. Charlie was pretty fascinated by how big the smoke cloud was.

We arrived home safe and sound. And I don't think I've ever been happier to be in Wyoming :) We had a great time, but it is sure glad to be home.