We're Here!

The sun is shining...the birds are singing...and life is sweet here in California! 

 

We arrived yesterday with no problems, grateful to have left the East Coast before the ice and snow hit and closed down everything.  It's always an interesting process to pick dates for a trip--not knowing what the future may hold as far as weather, possible sickness within the family that may affect flying, or even the safety of each individual aircraft.  It feels a little bit like throwing darts in the dark, but fortunately God can even see in the dark...and we feel so grateful for Him leading us to the times and dates for our flight that He did.

 

After an early morning wake-up call yesterday (4:00 am), the boys, although tired, did very well on the flight.  Josiah did perfectly, and David was fine as long as he was entertained to keep his mind off the fact that he couldn't get down and run around!  One blessing was our seating--we were on the last row of the plane, but there were no other people in that row so we were able to have some extra room, and both boys got a window seat.

 

Other random things from yesterday:

~ we had an incredible view of the Grand Canyon as we flew over

~ the man who sat in front of David (and whose wife slipped M&M's to David to keep him quiet toward the end of the flight) was obviously a frequent flier, and he said that he had never seen such a huge storm system as the one we flew over

~ we hit turbulence, enough to give me a queasy stomach...Josiah thought it was fun!

~ we got upgraded for free to a minivan when we picked up our rental car...then when we went out to the minivan they had for us (it was brand new, only 18 miles on it), it wouldn't start...so they gave us another one, and we dragged our weary selves and all our stuff from the first one into the second one, very grateful to finally be on the way to San Diego

~ the view of the Pacific Ocean as we drove down the 5 freeway from LA to San Diego was absolutely gorgeous...I'm eager to go stick my toes in the water

~ we always get our TV education when we visit Jeff's sister Kim and her husband Mike...they're wonderfully generous hosts, and we love being with them...they have a huge-screen TV, and last night we watched American Idol for the first time ever...I couldn't believe how emotional everybody was on that show...don't they know going into it that there's only the smallest, slimmest, tiniest chance that they'll win the show?...why do they act so devastated when they get cut?