Our summer vacation, in pieces

For the sake of brevity, or smaller chunks to read, I’ve broken up our vacation in days, roughly.  Here goes nothing 🙂
Thursday-Friday:
For just a few days off of vacation, I was able to get 10 days free. We decided to make a trip to Dland, but also keep heading down South to SD for a bit. We got to catch up with a lot of friends, and see family as well. We left Thursday night after work. Last time, we made several stops due to travel during the day. But during the night, we are able to just have the kids sleep, and we’re able to get there faster. Also, there was less traffic. So we braved the one lane road (the road narrows to one lane due to a closure), and made it within 6 or so hours. With their other grandparents, they kids have been accustomed to bagels in the morning. Grandpa goes out the morning after we arrive and gets a whole dozen! Brandon knows he can’t have the super sugary bagel, and usually likes just the plain version. Dave went out at the same time to get the rest of our essentials – milk, Cheerios, and some spray bottles, since we knew it’d be warm at the parks. We were planning to meet up with Abby to celebrate her birthday. Meg didn’t want to come to her parents’ house and her parents did not want to go to her. That left us to drag her parents with us in our car. We all filed into our car to make the drive across town. Poor Brandon was in the very back, but he didn’t seem to mind, other than his request for air conditioning. We stopped for lunch before making our way over to Meg. We had some yummy ramen, from this place whose portions were huge! I made an entire new bowl of noodles with those that I had taken out before starting to eat, in an attempt portion control. When we arrived up to Jeff’s parents’ house, P and her grandpa were asleep. Peyton had slept in the car, but Brandon needed a nap. We tried fruitlessly to get Brandon to take a nap there. We finally let him out to play with the P’s. We had brought swim clothes, but decided against it when we learned the pool hadn’t been heated. The last time we were out there, the older kids’ lips turned blue. Abby needed to be picked up from summer camp, so we brought our kids down to UCLA to walk around before dinner. In an hour, we managed to take them to the student store AND get them a Diddy Riese (they shared) ice cream sandwich. It was more of a bribe to come to the school so they too could get cheap ice cream and cookies. It was a little bad parenting on our part, giving them ice cream before dinner, but it was all part of our recruiting trip. Dave and I got to see some of the new buildings that have come up since we’ve last visited. Crazy how much construction there always seems to be, even when we attended the school. The buildings now are much more expansive and impressive. So we met up with the rest of the family at dinner. Meg told us that P was coming down with a cold, and I passed this on to Brandon, who was much more likely to interact with her than Peyton was. I told him we are just starting our vacation, so he should give P room, and not catch whatever she was coming down with. Brandon has a tendency to get in other kids’ faces to play with them. Peyton usually plays from afar, if at all. Brandon was sitting between Abby and me, while Peyton was sitting across from us with Daddy. P got down from her seat, and walked over to her sister. Brandon saw her coming, and nudged closer to me. He looked up at me, and said, “Mommy!” I told him she was getting sick, but I never said she had the plague! Since we weren’t terribly hungry, we had a bunch of tapas to split. One was a kobacha squash dish, with pine nuts. The menu had listed it as wasabi-infused, but upon tasting it, Brandon said, “Does this have horseradish in it?” Wow! His palate picked it up. I think he still had flashbacks from when he stuck a wad of it in his mouth last year at dinner. It did give him an appreciation for it.
After dinner, we headed back to the house again, to help Abby celebrate her birthday. There were cupcakes, but I had told the kids that since we’d had ice cream earlier, we weren’t going to have any cupcakes. Brandon AND Peyton, for that matter, remembered. Both declined when asked if they wanted a cupcake. I settled with them, and told them that we’d take them home with us to eat the next day. They agreed to it and had no problem. Dave’s mom was so impressed that they listened. I told her they know the consequences of trying to sneak dessert; Brandon first hand, and Peyton, by watching her brother’s previous attempts.