This trip was pretty much exclusively planned just for our boys. They have been wanting us to take them to an air show for a few years. Darin was especially nuts about it. So we totally surprised them. They wanted to know so badly where we were going. But I didn't cave at all. Nathan didn't even find out until the morning after our first night what city we were in. We got in pretty late because I had a Stake training to attend.
We stayed at the Galleria Marriott. It was pretty nice, standard, Marriott Hotel. The reason why I chose this one was because it had an indoor/outdoor pool and I remember staying in a Marriott with my parents when I was little and loving that I could swim under the glass wall to go outside.
The kids were really impressed because this was the first time they stayed at a Marriott since Ken has had his Gold Elite Status. That means he gets automatically upgraded to a bigger room on the concierge level and has access to the concierge lounge. Which is AWESOME! We get free breakfast in there, plus they put out snacks and drinks all day long, and in the evening they serve appetizers. With our 4 kids, free food is always a big deal, they LOVE it! (and so do we)
Notice how they each have a can of soda. That's because their dad just took them the lounge.
As we were walking from the elevator Ken had like 4 bottles of water, and I told him I just needed one. And then...I said, "That's okay, we can just take them to the air show tomorrow." So I totally let the cat out of the bag. The boys got all quiet and then they totally were like "Yes, we're going to an Air Show!" and did a happy dance down the hallway while they teased me about not being able to keep it secret.
First order of business after breakfast was to go swimming of course. Sometimes we wonder what the point is to taking them to all of these fabulous cities when all they want to do is go to the hotel pool! Here is our swimmer girl. She loves the water and her swimming vest!
My handsome Darin
We have this bag of swim toys that have pretty much traveled all over with us for the past two years. It has whiffle ball thingies and we always play this in the pool with the boys.
Our record for this trip was 26 tosses without dropping the ball with me and Nathan. But our highest of all time is 42 with me and Darin.
Ginger likes to play on the steps and collect all the balls and swim toys. Then she throws them in the water and does it all over again.
Another favorite of ours is making a train.
Chuga-Chuga-Choo-Choo
We all joined in but of course I wasn't able to take pictures of that. I'll tell ya, pulling those two big boys gets harder every year!
Cutie Nathan! This boy has amazing tolerance for shocking his body. He has no problem going back in forth between swimming in the cool pool and getting in the hot tub. Pool, Hot Tub, Pool, Hot Tub, Pool... Basically he just goes to which place he thinks is more fun at the moment and doesn't care if it is cold or not.
Ginger loves to be in the hot tub too. I think it is because she can walk all around because she definitely likes to have her freedom in the water. She does not want to be held very much.
This is a picture to record that Darin actually sat in a hot tub. Darin hates the hot tub and rarely will ever come in, even when all of us are in there and he has no one to play with he will still stay in the pool. At the most he will get in the hot tub for 2 minutes before we leave.
My Hard Working Man! Ken was going to take this Friday off of work. But then he got inundated with meetings and phone calls. There was some kind of drama if he was going to go here or there or anywhere the next week. The poor guy got very little sleep on top of the very little sleep the rest of us got because he was preparing for two possible trips that he may or may not have had to leave for soon after we got home. As it turned out he went on one trip just a few hours after we got home and the 2nd trip was a little over a week later.
I can't complain though because he sacrificed his comfort and played hard with us when we were awake and out and about.
After a morning of swimming we went back to the hotel and had room service (our favorite, if only RS existed at home!) and watched Up on the hotel TV. Then me and all the kids took a nap.
After we woke up we took the boys shopping. Well, first we paid them for the past month of work. They each earned $40 which is unheard of in our house because we are very cheap and only pay for extra work outside of normal chores and responsibilities. They just did that many extra jobs helping us get our home ready to sell. They were able to buy some toys they have been wanting for a very long time.
Then we went to the Dollar Movies to see the latest Harry Potter. Unfortunately the show was sold out, the boys were so disappointed. Darin suggested we ask the lady if they might have 6 tickets left just in case. I didn't think our chances were very likely and told him that but if he wanted to we could go up and ask her together. The together part was just so that way he would get the bad news from someone else and know it was final.
We got to the window and he asked, and she actually said "Well, we do hold 20 of the tickets so you can buy them but we can't guarantee you will have a seat." She seriously made my boys day. And taught them a huge lesson in being persistant. Anyway, so we got in and made it to the movie. We couldn't all sit together but the boys were able to sit by each other with Ken and Rose nearby. Me and Ginger hung out on the floor in the back, which was perfect for her. She really can't do the whole sitting still for 2 hours thing and she stayed pretty quiet and ate her popcorn for most of it.
So it's 11pm when we get out of the movie. Do you think we just went back to the hotel and hit the sack??? That would be a NO WAY! We picked up take-out and went to the hotel and played some games. And jumped on the beds. And then we watched another movie on the hotel TV. We are Movie Lover's if you can't tell. Talk about an exhausting Slumber Party. It was really fun though. We all finally crashed around 3 am.
Perfect timing since we needed to wake-up at 8:30am to get packed up and eat breakfast before the air show, right??? Except for me who woke up before 8 am without an alarm (totally unprecedented, I am soooo not a morning person) I was just so excited to go to the air show!!! Like I totally couldn't believe why all the rest of my family was moving so slow:-) They say when Momma's Happy, the Family's Happy. Which held pretty true. They were slow but tired happy.
The girls always love riding on the hotel carts.
The BellMan was really not happy about us bringing down our bags. But honestly it is just faster if we do it ourselves.
We did a Drive-Thru breakfast since we were running late. Which became an even later because we needed to stop at Home Depot and get Ear Protectors. I really wish we had remembered out set from Monster Truck Rally's because those suckers are spendy. Isn't Ginger cute with hers.
Yeah, we made it to the Air Show, while we were walking a mile just to get inside the park we were able to see skydivers so that was pretty cool for the kids. Maybe I should note that I also decided against bringing a stroller-- Not a good idea.
We got all set up in the free section and had plenty of room all around us and in front of us for Ginger to run back and forth. It was really great until this woman and her annoying family totally crowded us in and even went as far as putting her chair on Ginger's blanket right in front of my feet, while-I-am-sitting-right-there. Ginger's blanket is like 3 feet square. And when I tell her this spot is for my daughter, she actually folded over Ginger's blanket and put her chair in it's place!
Seriously, I have never stood up to someone really rude in public but we were about to brawl. She was like I don't see what you're problem is..the seats are very fluid, this other lady made rooms for us... And all I said was, "Well I made room for my family awhile ago, so you just need to move your chairs." She finally did along with talking about it and me to her mom, dad, aunt, her uncles cousin, etc (seriously like a group of 20 people). Then they abruptly all move their chairs like 7 feet away like I have leprosy. Thankfully Ken and the kids were walking around at the moment and didn't see me. But Ken was proud of me for standing up to her, really that is something I never do. I am such a chicken.
Anyway, to make it short since this blog post is long. I just have to say I am very thankful for the power of $$$. See to get into the air show was free after you paid for parking but you could buy the private seating for $10 a person and get into the VIP area. So after this incident and the fact that we were already a football field length away from the tarmac Ken just went and purchased us all really good seats in the VIP area and we were about three rows from the tarmac and completely uncrowded.
And the rest of our day was completely LOVELY! It was really awesome having such a great view. Something that surprised us about the air show was that it was non-stop flying acts. No breaks or anything. When one plane finished their routine the other guys was already up in the air and going. And they mixed it up quite a bit, so while one might do acrobatics, another may fly low to the ground, or another would have a chicken fight with a MAC truck with a rocket missle attached (SERIOUSLY!) It was pretty awesome!!! Here are some of the pictures we took.
The Blue Angels, they were just on display until the very end because they were the finishing act. There were a couple of times where I thought a huge plane was about to crash into them, and us. They were that close.
The boys said, "Whoa, did you see that!" A TON
Ken and Ginger. Both of the girls fell asleep about an hour into the Air Show. It was actually pretty perfect! We were able to keep the ear protectors on them the whole time and not have to worry about it. They woke-up just at the very end.
These were two very Happy Boys!
Okay, and Mom was pretty impressed too! It really was a terrific day. You couldn't have asked for better weather. 75 degrees with a slight breeze, and bright blue skies. We had so much fun!
Look Closely at this picture and the next few. Do you see the two planes? That's the Blue Angels. They flew all across the sky like that in perfect form. It was AMAZING!
Our Pretty Rose finally woke-up. She really like the planes she saw too. And at the end all she could say was "I want ice cream."
So Ken bought her ice cream and we headed home. It was a perfect day and weekend. We loves these trips. I am so thankful we have our boys and get to go and have high-octane weekends with them.
2 comments:
That looks like so much fun!! That's on our "to-do list", I hope we get to take our kids there one day too - fun!
that looks like lots of fun. Glad you had a great weekend and that you stood up for yourself good for you. Love ya babe
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