Mama and William do Texas

When I was on leave​ for my surrogate pregnancy and contemplating whether I wanted to go back to work or not I had asked the kids “Do you really want to travel a lot?” And their answer was always a resounding “Yes!!!” I asked William where he wanted to go and he'd say “I really want to go to Texas so I can say “howdy y'all, I ain't from Texas, I'm from Spokane!” (In an unconvincing southern accent) I'm happy to say that William and I made that ridiculous dream come true and went to Dallas, Texas y'all!

This was definitely a spur of the moment trip. I worked Friday morning and got off at about 9:30 am. It was my Friday and the calendar’s Friday so I had the whole day and weekend in front of me. The kids had a special lunch thing at their school so I got ready for that. As I was blow drying my hair I started looking at flights just for fun like I always love to do. I saw some San Diego flights looked pretty open and some Virgin flights to LA looked good. I looked at my calendar and literally had nothing on it so I thought, why the heck not? I picked William up from his advanced program school to take him to his regular school for the special lunch and ran the idea of going on a trip by him. "Yeah sure, whatever" was his response. As we were eating lunch with Maddie and Daddy at school I looked at more flights. There were a bunch of flights out of Seattle at 5 pm but in order to make it to Seattle we would have to leave the Spokane airport at 1:30. "I don't think it's gonna work buddy" I told William "If we want to make it anywhere we would literally have to leave right now." "Then you better get going" my hubs encouraged me. With a shrug William and I cleaned up our lunch and rushed to the airport with nothing but my purse and thankfully a breast pump (don't get me started on that... yes the jugs are still flowing). They were starting to board as we got to the gate and we were assigned a row to ourselves in the back of the plane.

We made it to Seatac without any issues and looked at the info for our next flight, which I remembered I hadn't even listed for yet. For some reason California didn't seem that exciting to William or me anymore since we've both been there multiple times. I remembered William's random urge to go to Texas and we decided to go there instead. While we waited for our flight we collectively had a slice of apple pie, a whopper jr, a strawberry lemonade, and a glass of pinot grigio.

We got our seats on a Dallas flight (woohoo!) and got on the plane with a whole row to ourselves. When some people hear about these short trips I like to do they say "Oh it's not even worth it to fly all the way there for such a short time". But me and my big kids legit love flying. We love sitting there with our snack box, tablet/smartphone, and wine/juice and relaxing and watching a movie or reading a book. The flight itself is always part of the adventure.(and it's literally the only place I watch new movies now... Alaska offers movies for free on your own device)

With the time change we landed in Dallas super late, almost midnight. I had booked a hotwire hotel right before we took off. With hotwire you don't know exactly what hotel you'll get but you know the area and how many stars and the price. We got The Hilton in Grapevine, TX less than 10 minutes from the airport. We took an Uber there and checked into the gorgeous hotel with two queen beds. William and I both slept so great.

When I woke up in the morning at 7 am I began googling "attractions near me" because I had literally no idea what we were going to do all day. I saw that we were really close to a mall with an aquarium and close to historical downtown grapevine, which both looked fun and interesting. We took our time getting ready and got some toothbrushes and deodorant from the front desk (since we literally packed nothing). We put on the same clothes we wore the day before and set out for the day. We had a quick lunch in the hotel coffee shop and followed google's directions to the mall that was about 15 minutes away.

Once we got to the mall the first thing on William's agenda was to find a cowboy hat (since we were in Texas.. duh!) After a few stores we found one that he liked and I liked the price. We went to a few other stores and bought a couple more random things like a backpack for William, some random shoes for me, and some snacks. We found the aquarium and started our tour. It was a great aquarium and we saw lots of fish, sharks,an octopus, starfish, and other sea life. William was probably one of the oldest kids there. I love that he's old enough to be a fun travel buddy but young enough to enjoy the kid stuff.He also enjoyed playing in a play-place they had that he was technically an inch too tall for but we are rebels.

After we had seen all the exhibits and William filled out his little passport of the sea and got his prize (a plastic gold medal) we made our way to the food court for some lunch. We shared a plate of chicken teriyaki with noodles and William had a milkshake.

William wanted to ride a little carousel in the mall and then we found an arcade. We played a competitive round of ski-ball (William beat me and I did not even let him) and played a Mario Olympics game where Princess Peach(me) beat Mario (William) by a hair. We decided to make our way to historical downtown Grapevine and called an Uber.

The visitors center in Grapevine, Texas was one of the coolest visitors center I have ever seen. They had this amazing model of a train and city and a bunch of fun stuff for kids to do in a museum like setting, all for free. We could have spent awhile there... but true to our travel style we did a substantial walk-through and moved on.

Right by the visitors center there were a group of FOUR little museums/historical buildings. For just randomly picking a place to visit, we hit the cultural jackpot. The history buff in me was so excited. The first was housed in an old barn that was turned into a traditional museum where we learned about the history of Grapevine and it's beginnings as a small farm town. The second was an old schoolhouse set up like a school with original artifacts where we learned about education in the 1800s. The third building talked about the town's main crop of cotton and their farming methods. The fourth building was an old house where we saw artifacts from some of the towns earliest settlers. This whole museum quartet was entirely free.

After we got our fill of history (I could have stayed there all day and read everything... William had had enough) we walked down the main drag. There were so many cute shops and restaurants. We went to a cute market and enjoyed some Texas tea and doctor pepper. We shopped around in the shops and William got a Texas license-plate key chain for his teacher. We were starting to get a little hungry again so we stopped and had gelato in an Italian restaurant. They had a craft fair going on and we wondered the booths looking at all the beautiful handmade crafts made by the locals. A poop emoji pencil caught William's eye and he got it for his sister. The woman who sold it said "I spend hours knitting these hats and stuffed animals and my most popular item is a poop pencil" haha! We saw a historic log cabin that housed some of the town's earliest inhabitants. After a little more walking and shopping we were ready for some dinner. We found a cute little saloon/winery type of restaurant. One of my favorite things to do when traveling is to go wine tasting and I can't exactly walk into a bar or winery with William, but this restaurant had an extensive wine list and I got to try two different kinds and had the best fruit and cheese platter that I have ever had in my life. William had spaghetti and meatballs.

After we had our fill of wine, cheese, and meatballs it was about time to head to the airport. We ordered an uber and made our way there. I gave us plenty of time in case there were long security lines but there was no one in line. We had about an hour to relax by the time we made it to our gate, which was nice after being on the go all day. Eventually I looked out the window and saw the familiar old Eskimo rolling into the gate. They assigned us seats as the plane was almost done boarding and we got another row to ourselves for the journey home. We landed early in Seattle and we even managed to make it on an earlier flight home to Spokane (with a little sprinting through the airport which is always fun). I was so relieved that every part of this impromptu trip to Texas worked out. I love being able to show my babes different parts of the country!

A Day in Vegas with Maddie and William

Monday in Vegas 4/3/2017 We woke up at 5am and got ready for the day. We ate pizza we ordered last night for breakfast and got coffee and steamers from Starbucks. Maddie met a little boy in line at Starbucks named Dario. We decided to walk to the strip since we weren't in a rush to get anywhere and nothing was open yet. It was about 8 o'clock. After a 20 minute walk under the freeway we got to Caesar's palace.

We walked around and looked at the statues. None of the stores were open and we were like the only people walking around. We walked out to the strip and went to McDonald's. Then we went to Walgreen's and got some socks for Maddie and a Vegas Rubik's cube for William. We stopped outside of the wax museum and took a picture of the kids in front of hulk smasher from Ironman (William had to tell me what it was... I thought it was a transformer). We also stopped outside of treasure island for a picture in front of the pirate ship. We walked to circus circus. It was a long walk and our feet were getting tired. Once we got there I pumped real quick in a bathroom and then we made our way to Adventure ​Dome. I bought our day passes and we started riding rides. The roller coasters were super fun and intense. They took our picture and on one of them my hair flipped in front of my face and I looked like a hair monster. It was so funny! The kids rode just about every ride in the place. I rode most of them but I'm getting too old for this stuff. They also had laser tag that was fun, I got 3rd place and William tied for last and was super bummed. I told him “All that matters is that you had fun!” and he said “I didn’t”. There was a 4D movie theater where we watched a short SpongeBob movie and bubbles came out of the walls.

We ate some nachos and then made our way to the Midway games at circus circus. We ate Krispy Kreme donuts and I pumped in a bathroom again. We played a couple games. Maddie and William both won a donut stuffed toy and William also got a smiley face emoji stuffed toy. We watched two acts at the circus stage, some unicycle riders and some strong guys who picked each other up. I wondered how guys get into that sort of thing. Do they just one day ask each other, “Hey, you wanna pick each other up and perform at the Circus?” When we’d had enough of the circus circus we decided to uber on down to the Bellagio. We went inside and walked around the botanical gardens. There was an asian statue made entirely of flowers and pretty flower sculptures in shapes like turtles.

We walked out to the fountain and watched the show. As always it did not disappoint. We crossed the street to the Paris hotel and stopped in a store for gatorade and wine. Mama made it to almost 5 o'clock before her first drink in Vegas...I call that a win. We walked around the Paris hotel and found a little cafe fittingly called “Cafe Madeleine”. Of course we had to stop for $3 macaroons and William asked “In Paris do they sell oreos for $3 each?” We then bought tickets to take the elevator to the top of the ‘Tour de Eiffel’. Once it was our turn to go up we enjoyed the 540 foot views of Las Vegas. We watched a bellagio show, looked out the telescope, and William worked on his bottle flipping skills. When we had enough of the gorgeous view we took the elevator down and planned out our next move.

After a trip to CVS to pick up snacks and drinks we took an uber back to the hotel. In looking back on it now I’m trying to remember what we had for dinner but I think our meal just consisted of pringles and trail mix for the kids and wine and a granola bar for me… dinner of champions. When we got to the hotel room the kids rested and I pumped and watched the first half of the Gonzaga game. During half time we went down to play mini golf in our hotel’s Kiss (like the band) themed mini golf. We had such a good time! We attempted to keep score but obvs weren’t really serious about it. Once we’d putted all 18 holes I looked on my phone and saw the zags game had 5 minutes left was really close and I wanted to watch the rest of it. We went to Guy Fieri's mexican restaurant located inside our hotel and grabbed a table near a TV. We ordered drinks as we watched the game and I could tell the kids were fading fast. While I yelled at the TV and the ref’s ridiculous calls the kids rested their precious little heads on the table. We ordered some fried ice cream to share and by the time we got it the game was pretty much over and the kids were pretty much asleep. I had to force my kids to eat a couple bites of ice cream (what a mean mom) and we left most of it and went back to our room. We snuggled into our beds and fell asleep.

Mama and William Do Kona, Hawaii-Day 2

On Sunday January 10th William and I woke up in our hotel room in Kona, Hawaii feeling rested and refreshed... at 6:00 am. Why sleep in when you're in paradise!? We showered and got ready for the day and headed down to the coffee shop for some black coffee for me and a smoothie for William.

We went for a long walk down the street among the shops, restaurants, and hotels. Most of which were still closed since it was so early. We saw a lot of statues and took pictures outside of the Bubba Gump Shrimp restaurant with Forrest Gump's shoes. I wanted to eat breakfast somewhere with a really authentic Hawaiian menu, and William wanted Subway so I let him win and we split a delicious breakfast sandwich. We talked about what we wanted to do that day and decided we wanted to snorkel and go for a drive to see a black sand beach. We walked around a little bit longer and went to a farmers market and looked at all the interesting Hawaiian fruit that William had never seen before. I found a snorkel store on my phone and we went there to get our flippers and masks.

We went back to the hotel room to change into our swimsuits to get ready for snorkeling. The Seahawks playoff game vs the Minnesota Vikings was just starting and I really wanted to watch it but William reminded me, "Mom you're in Hawaii, you don't want to sit around and watch football." And he was totally right. We made our way down to the water and got right in. The water felt great. Not too cold and the beach was perfect. I was a little nervous about William snorkeling but he did so great and we held hands almost the whole time. He got so excited every time he saw a fish. I'd hear his little underwater squeal of delight and he'd point it out to me and smile. After we had our fill of flippering around we took a break and relaxed on the beach for a little while. (Of course I checked on the score of the game on my phone) We built a sand castle even though we didn't have any buckets or anything and then went snorkeling again for a while longer. It was getting closer and closer to checkout time at the hotel so we eventually made our way back to the room to pack up our stuff and check out.

Back in the room I got to watch the last few minutes of the Seahawks game and we both were so happy when they won in the final seconds due to Minnesota missing a field goal. We had considered going to the game in Minnesota instead of Hawaii that weekend but playoff tickets were expensive and flights there were pretty full so we went to Hawaii instead. We definitely made the right choice. It was like 3 degrees there and 80 degrees in Kona.

We checked out of our lovely hotel, put all our stuff into our rental car and hit the road towards the other side of the island where there was one of the worlds largest black sand beaches. It was a beautiful drive along the coast with lots of places to stop and enjoy the scenery. We stopped at an awesome park and played together for a little bit. I love that William can act pretty mature and we like to do a lot of the same things like sightseeing, snorkeling, and trying new restaurants, but he also is a kid and gets so much joy out of running around a park and sitting on a fake whale. He is one of my favorite travel buddies. Then we stopped at an authentic Hawaiian restaurant called McDonald's for lunch (once again William's choice). It was a pretty long drive and after awhile my travel buddy fell asleep in the backseat. I kept saying stuff like "Buddy look at those waves!" and "Look at those cool trees." and getting no response.

We finally made it to the black sand beach. It was breathtakingly beautiful. We grabbed our snorkel gear and made our way to the beach. Snorkeling proved to be a challenge. There were a lot of big rocks that were painful to walk on and walking on the hot and dry black sand for even a second was painful. Instead of snorkeling we found a comfy spot and watched the waves and some sea turtles. There were about five turtles 10 feet away splashing around the water. We relaxed and ate some oranges that I had bought from a fruit stand. Sitting there on the sand I couldn't believe that it was January and I was sitting in 80 degree weather on a beach in Hawaii with one of my favorite people in the whole world. I am incredibly blessed and not as day goes by where I don't stop to thank the powers that be for how lucky I am.

We decided to make our way back to the car and head to the green sand beach that we had heard about. It as an insanely bumpy drive down some one lane roads. Like if a car was coming the other way one of us had to drive into the ditch. It was like a stressful continuing game of chicken. At this point my phone died and I didn't have a car charger. I new where we were and I had a rough idea of how to get back to the airport but without my phone GPS it was stressful. What was I gonna do, look at a map like a cavewoman? We followed the hand painted signs to the green sign beach and parked in a desolate parking lot. We got our of the car and saw a sign with an arrow that said "Green Sand Beach, three miles" We were in no condition to hike 6 miles round trip, and we probably wouldn't have enough daylight. Instead we followed a group of people to some cliffs nearby where a sign read "Southern most point of the U.S.A." William stood at the edge of the cliff and terrifyingly leaned over so he could be "out of the USA for a second". We bought sponge Bob ice cream from an ice cream truck that was parked nearby and made our way back to the car. We drove back to Kona and took a beautiful walk near the beach. We looked for a place to have dinner and William was being goofy about every restaurant saying, "I can't go in there mom, it's a bar!" Son, I'm not just going to walk you into a bar. We decided on a place called "Humpty's" (after Humpback whales). I had a guacamole burger and William had spaghetti. We finished just before the sun was setting and went outside to watch a perfect Hawaiian sunset.

Once the sun had set it was dark (obviously) and we weren't sure what to do in the few hours we had left before we had to be at the airport for our 11:55 flight home. After moseying our way back to the car we said goodbye to the beach and headed in the direction of the airport. We had plenty of time so we stopped at Target and got a couple souvenirs. We gassed up the rental car and got to the airport a little earlier than we needed to... but what else are you going to do with a 7 year old in Hawaii at 9pm when you have a flight to catch? We were able to plug in our phones and relax for a bit in the beautiful open airport. Eventually sweet William fell asleep on my lap. When they called our names for available standby seats (thank goodness) I had to practically carry him onto the plane. He slept in my lap for the majority of the flight and I nodded in and out of sleep. When we landed and he groggily woke up he declared "We can't be in Seattle already it's only been a couple minutes." I told him time went faster because he was sleeping and he said "Nuh-uh I wasn't sleeping!" Silly, precious boy. We caught our connecting short flight to Spokane without any issues. We landed at around 7am and as we walked through the jet-bridge in our shorts and flip-flops could feel the twenty degree weather bringing us back to reality. What an amazing 36 hours we had had in Hawaii. To this day, every time I'm feeling down or like I need a little pick me up, I think of sweet little William frolicking in the white sand beaches of Hawaii in January and it puts a smile of my face.