Sunshine 2013

Jex and I had to go to the Sunshine State for some stupid military stuff. So we decided to make a trip of it and visit our super rad friends who we miss so dang much!
You remember the posts I did about a year ago about the long ass trip we took from one coast of the U.S. to the other right? Riiiight? Yeah them.
This time we got to fly. Yay! So it took 1 rather than 4 days. Well it would, if we could ever get out tickets squared away.
There's this funny thing the military likes to do: completely forget about the dependent. Doesn't matter if you're the spouse, child, or mother who lives with ya'll because of extenuating circumstances, if you are not the military member they sometimes forget that you exist. After weeks of talking to every person we got handed off to and promised that the tickets would be taken care of the day we were supposed to leave I still had no ticket, as far as we knew. We decided to just go to the airport anyways, maybe things would work out for the best.
We walked up to the ticketing counter and to the person behind the weird castle wall they've got going on. Lo and Behold, I had a ticket! YES! But Jex's ticket had been refunded. The travel office opened 30 min before our flight was supposed to leave. So we waited and called and waited and called again and prayed and waited and someone picked up the phone! After about 10 minutes the super rad chick at the travel office had Jex a new ticket and we were off. That chick is so getting cookies.

We got to Sunshine, not many problems later and waited for Cait not to DIE driving through the scariest city on the west coast. Then we drove 5 hours north to where she and her lovely little fam have made home for a little under a year now.
It was soooo good to see them again. God knows how much we've missed their distinct and shiny presence in our lives. Cait is the only one who can take my complaining for what it is, venting. Then turn around and give me super radtastic advice. It also helps that we're kinda married to the same person.
Whoa, whoa now. We're not actually married to the same person. Our husbands just tend to be semi-clones of one another on the personality level a lot of the time.

Pterodactyl and Kitten have gotten so BIG! They're still the most adorable things ever. Pterodactyl is talking now and she's super astute. Kitten is in danger of being sold from time to time, but he's still the sweetest snuggle bug. Two is a hard age.

Then we drove back to where we had to do our thing. Bought armloads of Japanese goodies from the super cool Japanese mall we found. Melon Cream Soda how I've missed you!

Now we're home, cleaning everything, trying to downsize and get rid of unnecessaries.

Picture time!

Everyone loved these silly disguise glasses

Remember these magical toys?

Best Picture Ever

Uncle Jex and the Pterodactyl

The Gaggle Rock

Helping

Kitten was tired. He is also made of lead.

Look!

Underwater shot with the super rad Olympus Tough. I love that thing.

Kitten and he's pretty mama.

Jex looking all thoughtful and stuff

Pretty

Pterodactyl's favorite things right now are sharks. She's so awesome.

This Jellyfish reminded me of a wedding gown

Sea Lion 

Hurry take a picture, we're passing the Dreamworks Studios!!! Oh we were so lost. 

What? Me addicted to Japanese junk food? You must be confusing me with another dashingly handsome fellow with an armload of goodies.

Taiyaki Pan! It was so hard not to buy this

And this guy. 

I would've gotten a better picture but we literally ran from one flight to the connector and barely made it

Have a lovely week all of you.
The light heart lives long~ <3 p="">

Sunshine Trip: Day 3

We woke up to babies. Apparently tiny people don't need sleep like big people do. They had kept Cait up all night and then decided to be done with Druid and Faeriman's spare bedroom.
Which was really lame because we'd decided to sleep until late that day. You know not get up at the ass crack of dawn and get on the road as the first few tendrils of light are shining IN YOUR FACE. But what had to be done had to be done.
This turned out to be the day of God's timing.
I also think this is the day we heard Drunk Grandma preaching on the radio... if it's not it's close enough...
Anycrazydesertradioprograms, we got on the road and made good time. Everything was going along swimmingly. No really. The babies realized that they were going to be in their seats for longer than they wanted to and simply dealt with it. Nymnym was still kinda afraid of the trailer but she'd stopped sitting on my head when I was in back with the babies.
I think this is also the day that Jex sat in back with the babies. He did amazingly well for a dude who is still a little weirded out by tiny humans. He still won't touch a diaper though, wuss.

We got to our dusk fill up and discovered that Jex had completely rearranged the back seat. There were spaces on either side of the car seat because of the way they sat in the Explorer. He'd filled those spaces up to give the person in the middle more leg room. Nice. But we'd have to roll down the windows to get the babies out. Not a problem actually. The car seats held the kids up just about even with the window ledge so it wasn't too bad.
We filled up, changed diapers, got much needed caffeine. Everything was going swimmingly, there was even grass for Nymnym to pee on... oh that right I didn't tell you, when we got to the desert Nymnym wouldn't pee because there was no grass. We're pretty sure she held her bladder for an entire state, maybe even a state and a half.

We started to pull out and I rolled up the windows, most of them anyways. You see, Kitten's window wouldn't roll up. Jex and Cait were trying to wiggle it and force it and everything as I pulled slowly out of the truck stop. Nothing was working. Which was strange because we've never had problems with that window, ever.
Kitten is his father's son, it gets to be 70 degrees and the boy gets shivery. And it was fast approaching night time, in the desert, in December. So after a while we pulled over and tried to fix the window.
We dissected it and called AssbreakerTony when we couldn't figure out what the crap was going on. There was also this little beagle hound mix little squatty legged dog that kept trying to steal Jex's tools and come home with us. To add some craptastic frosting to the frustration cake we pulled over near a railroad crossing. Between the conductor purposefully (oh it was totally on purpose) blowing the horn to freak us out (and it worked I shrieked and jumped in a full circle before figuring out what happened. Apparently train horns turn off my intelligent brain and replaces it with Derp) but when we were troubleshooting the window with Tony trains would come by and make it near impossible to hear him.

Day turned to night. Then the phone started to die.

Luckily my husband is made of awesome. He used to be an electrician and we just happened to have a length of copper wire left over from trying to fix the tail lights on the trailer.
Jex hotwired the window.
I'm not kidding. It was great and amazing and there was much rejoicing.

So we climb back into the car and go to get back on the highway and the highway is a parking lot. Jex says it's ok because the access road will take us all the way into Gallup, where we've decided we will be eating dinner.
Why was the highway a parkinglot? Another wreck. But here is where it turns into some super rad, this can't just be coincidence, stuff. When we pulled over Cait was watching the road when the lights on the highway went all crazy. If we hadn't pulled over we probably would have been in that wreck.
Not only that but the delay made it possible for us to eat at Grandma's Burritos in Gallup (that's really the name of the town, it's in New Mexico. I usually don't use town names because OPSEC is burned into my brain. But no, if you ever go through I want you to know the best place to eat EVER!). Which was amazing.
Adovado with green chili. Best thing in the universe next to fresh Tirimisu and German Goulash. 

We ended up driving through the night because it made sense and the babies were being awesome. And it was good, for a while.

The light heart lives long~