Road tripping

I almost didn't blog tonight.  I almost didn't make it to tonight actually.  I nearly passed out from exhaustion pre-dinner.  But, I powered through and am ready to do this most boring of posts for my dedicated readers (my mom, Jeannette, Valerie, Sherry and Cathy.  Except Cathy won't read this until November. Ha!).

Last night was an awful night.  I drank too much tea too late in the day so I had to get up to go to the bathroom three times.  Crickets were having a chirp-off outside of the bedroom window. Elliott somehow made it up and over his railing and fell out of bed at 3:45.  He also scraped the hell out of his back on the corner of his dresser on the way down.  The adrenaline from that one took about 30 minutes to subside.  Oh, and I also had a dream that somebody I don't particularly want to see or talk to became best friends with my brother and was hanging out at my parents house unbeknownst to me when I showed up for a party.  I woke up actually angry.  Like, high blood pressure, hot red face, pissed.   Anyway, that's mostly why this post almost didn't happen tonight.  I also worked all day and every single therapy session had insanity happen.  Then I went shopping for stuff for Spencer's birthday party and made a cheesecake after dinner.

OK.  Enough blah, blah, blah.  Let's get down to the road trip.

Our plan was to leave the house last Friday at 12:45.  We needed to pick up Spencer from school and we wanted to leave there by 1:00.

Hot damn, we did it!

But then it took FOREVER for Spencer to come to the office.  And we also had to go to Hobby Lobby to buy a t-shirt and an iron on patch, because I almost ruined Spencer's entire year by not making an "8" shirt for him. 

It was about 1:45 before we were truly on the road.

Elliott couldn't wait to get to California.

This was our first family trip to CA without a stroller.  It left a lot of extra space in the back.

We drove through Maricopa on our way to I-8.  We decided to drive by our old house since we were right there.  The neighborhood has changed so much and not at all since we bought that house 9 years ago.  The houses are all the same, but the plants.  Oh my god.

Our house.

I will have you know that I bought this tree in a 5 gallon bucket, stuck it in the trunk of my car, drove it home and Michael and I planted it.   Look at it now!

And this tree was about 2 feet tall when we moved in.

We planted this cactus too.  Each part was about 3 pieces when we planted it.  It has spread out immensely and become quite prolific.

Flashback time!  Our street right after we moved in.

This was August 2007.  We'd been there for a little more than a year.  I think we planted the tree in May.  Look at how little it is.

Side by sides

I just cannot get over this tree.  I planted that!

Back to present day!

We drove to Dateland, AZ and decided we needed a bathroom break and snack.  The kids chose doritos.

Michael and I shared a world famous date shake.  I am a native Arizonan and have driven through Dateland more times than I can remember and it was my first date shake.  It was absolutely delicious but maybe not worth the $6 it cost.

We got into San Diego a little bit before 7:00.  All we wanted to do was eat and check into the hotel so we could go to bed.  I usually refuse to eat at chains when we're on vacation, but sometimes you just have to, because the alternative is far or unknown.  This was right there by our hotel and not crowded.  It ended up being a very good choice.

Not my burger, but you get the idea.

We checked into the hotel and almost didn't get a room because the card I used to reserve it months ago is the card that was fraudulently used in July and was cancelled.  Luckily we got the very last room available.  It could have been totally disastrous.  

My next post will be much more entertaining, I promise.  I will detail everything about the day I turned 36.  Oh god.