vegas, cousins, dad, california...

Every other year Karl's mom invites us to their timeshare in Carlsbad, CA.  We made the horrible but economical decision to drive.  Once upon a time... before I learned of Karl's love for the-road-less-traveled (by most people for a reason) detours and before road trips meant more than 6 straight hours of handing my kids things and before I got carsick by just the thought of getting carsick... I liked road trips.  Back when it meant fun music, gas station treats, and silly games.  Yep.  I used to like them.  But, now I loath them.  I (cover your ears/eyes, kids) hate them.  I try to sleep as much as I can to wear off the car sickness and to time warp away as much of the trip as I can.  I try complaining and saying things like, "Somebody shoot me now!" and things like that but it doesn't help as much as sleeping.  

This year, to break up the long drive, we stayed in Vegas.  We stayed with Karl's cousin, David, and his family.  Our kids really hit it off and had a blast together.  And, well, we had so much fun it made the driving worth it.  Mostly.  As much as possible.

  

 They took us to see the beautiful Bellagio.  Karl's other cousin (with 14 aunts and uncles the guy has about a billion cousins), John and his family stopped by to say hi.  Emily and Eva had so much fun with Eva's camera.  They were posing all over the place and cracking us up.  I got a shot of one of the many times that Emily (who has very very tall genes) was helping Eva (who has my genes) get a better shot by picking her up so she could see higher.

 

After the Bellagio we went to a mall with the cutest playground I have ever seen.  It had kid size houses, a maze, and stage and tons more.  It was so cute.  Okay, and maybe my favorite parts were the H & M store, and the steak salad (I still crave it, I knew I would after the first bite) from the Italian restaurant. 

 

I love how Italian restaurants have the paper on the table so the kids can draw.  Makes the meal a little more enjoyable.  These are Eva and Emily's drawings.  I love Eva's spelling.... "dase" and "ros".  

 

And the next day...

Lindsay made a manly fathers day breakfast with bacon, cheesy eggs, toast.  Perfect.  

Tangent start:  It was good to see that Lindsay is a fellow non-breakfast lover.  I am almost of ashamed of my habit that appalls nutritionists all over.  I am a social breakfast eater but, really, soggy milky cereal, syrupy pancakes, greasy sausage, dry buttery toast... all before my body has had a chance to get used to the fact that I tore it out of bed?  Uh, no thanks.  "They" all say if I don't eat it, it will make me fat. But, Lindsay, happens to be the skinniest-real-live-runway-model-body person I have seen in real life.  Ha.  I love having my supposed bad habits justified.  Tangent end.

Abbi and Ryan came and picked up our kids for the second leg of the trip.  Nice, huh?  Actually it was a trade off because we were planning on taking their little one the whole way from CA to UT.  More on that later.  They got a couple shots of the trip...

 

If cartoons are on, consider my kids gone (ooh, nice rhyme!).  Tom and Jerry already sent Samuel into his pick-his-lip trance.  You can see that Eva lost her second top tooth that morning.  Bringing the tally to six.  Check out Eva's neck in the sleeping photo.  Poor thing.

 

To celebrate fathers day I had the kids draw a picture of Karl and write what they wanted and ironed it onto t-shirts (was supposed to be simple, but what I envisioned was not possible so it ended up complicated). Samuel's says, "i lovE MY DAD" and Eva's says, "my dad is nice to me."  I made Karl one that says, "my kids love me."  I didn't get a good photo of Samuel's but his portrait is so cute.

I also put this together.  In every photo they are so happy to be with their dad.  

 I would have posted it on fathers day but I just realized how I could do it two days ago.  It just came to me.  Duh.  So easy.  It is 5 min.  The first 3 min are photos of Karl and the kids, most of them I have blogged already, and the last two min are my kids made up songs and tributes to their dad. 

Thanks Kathryn and Gordon, for making the vacation possible.

Thanks, David and Lindsay, for letting us stay and being such the hosts.

Thanks, Karl, for the greatest kids ever.