Colorado 2012 & Charlie's First Plane Ride.

A couple weeks ago, we flew out to my parents lake house in Colorado with Charlie and his cousins. Even though it was a bit crazy at times having 3 little ones together, I think it made it a little easier. They were able to entertain themselves a bit by chasing eachother around. I think if it were just Charlie, it would have been a bit more challenging to keep him happy.

Overall, Charlie did better than we thought he would. There were times where we wanted to pull our hair out (especially around take off and landing where the attendants insisted on having him in a seatbelt even though we'd be taxing for awhile). Often times we would let him not be in the seatbelt and then when the attendant came by, we'd try to put it back on so we wouldn't get in trouble. After we landed in Colorado we rented a big car and the 7 of us drove 2 hours to the cabin. It was a looooong travel day. Did I mention we also had a 2 hr layover in LA?

We stayed in Colorado for 4 nights and did a lot of hanging out and playing in the snow. Getting Charlie to agree to wear snow clothes just didn't happen so we had to stuff him in the clothes. By the time we were done, Rob and I were sweating and swearing. It was awesome! ;) I think the highlight of our trip was sledding. My dad bought 3 sleds for the kids but the adults had fun with it, too. There is a little hill by their house that we walked to and played for awhile. Charlie didn't want to sit in the sled but I held him down and went - he looooved it.

I love this one. Rob accidentally went over a bump and they totally went airborn. Rob is trying to slow down with his hand, and Charlie has his hand over his forehead as if to say "geez dad, what are you doing?!" I think I might frame this. It makes me laugh whenever I see it.

The day we came home, we had to leave the house at 5:30 am. It was snowing and super windy so it took us 3 hours to get to the airport (almost 3.5 after getting gas). In the morning when we left, Rob checked the flight and it was on time. We pulled into the area to return our rental car around 9:00 am and Rob checked our flight status again and it said, wait for it...CANCELLED. WTF? Rob called the airline and they said they could get us on a 1:00 pm flight but we wouldn't land until 8:00 pm in San Jose. Rob told them that wouldn't work so they ended up getting all 7 of us on a non stop flight to San Jose and ended up landing hours before our original flight was to land (our original flight had a 3 hr layover at LAX). It caused some stress for a short time but in the end, the travel gods were working for us.

All in all it was a good trip but its always nice to come home and to come home to almost 80 degree weather was wonderful. There's no place like home!