Labor Day weekend

I am here with two purposes:  one to record our trip to CA and one to avoid getting another text from Marianne that begins, "OK sister..."

We went to California on Friday night.  We had an 11:00 PM flight.  I may never recover.  I'm a toddler who needs her bedtime preserved.

Security isn't terrible that time of night.  Also, it always feels like insult to injury that Mark is met with such suspicion at the airport.  He can't go through the scanner with his pump, so it feels like the logical conclusion is that he must be a terrorist.  He is patted down very thoroughly and they even swab his hands to see if they are covered in explosives.  

I always just bite my tongue even though I want to say something snarky.

Braeden picked us up at the airport and it was so good to see him.  He swoops me up in the tightest hugs and I forget how much I need those hugs.

We stayed at a hotel and Braeden retrieved us again the next morning to take us to the airport to get the rental car.  We went to their apartment and enjoyed getting acquainted with Eleanor.  We went to the Davis Farmer's Market and a great used book store.

I had brought a stack of books for Eleanor and had put some in everyone's suitcase:

Some of them were surplus from school and some of them were gifted to me by a kindergarten teacher.

At the bookstore, I said, "Hey, we have room for more books since we brought those for Eleanor."

Adam amended my statement, "You have room for books."  Apparently he wasn't willing to be an accomplice to a book buying spree.

I bought some books anyway.

(And fit them all in my suitcase, so there.)

I had a flare up of my eye disease (because that's always fun).  I didn't bring enough medicine (I'm supposed to take 5 pills per day when I have a flare up), so I called my doctor and had a prescription sent and it was a whole ordeal and Adam took over getting it accomplished.  He even drove to the Walgreens in Sacramento where the prescription was sent.

He's always the MVP (even when he won't take extra books in his suitcase).

We had lunch at Black Bear Diner and Eleanor was masterfully handled by her parents.  She is busy and loves to stand and just pitches her body toward anything she wants.  Here she wanted a glass of water so she just flung herself on the table.  

She is tenacious, that one!  She is also incredibly darling and I love watching Braeden and Anna team up to provide an idyllic life for her.

We spent the rest of the day in their air conditioned apartment.  I read to Eleanor.

She loved this book and would get really excited and bounce up and down and grab at the pictures.  Other books she would just grab and chew on them.  

I miss her.

In the evening, Eleanor went to sleep and Braeden went with us back to our hotel to swim.  He was jumping in his car and I said, "Don't you need a swimsuit?"  

He said, "I keep one in my car."  Like you do....

Adam and the boys swam and I read my book.  The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Sunday we went to church with Braeden and Anna and Eleanor.  Eleanor was really and truly comfortable around us by then and Adam or I held her during sacrament meeting.  I loved their diverse little ward.  The sacrament was blessed in Mandarin.  Braeden and Anna have a friend named George who was recently baptized.  (Braeden was supposed to baptize him, but it was on the day Anna was giving birth.)  George is in his 80s and is blind.  Braeden and Anna pick him up for church and love him.  He was sitting behind us in the chapel and I overheard a young man, who was passing the sacrament whisper, "George, would you like the sacrament?"  "Give me your hand and I'll guide you."

It warmed my heart.

I got Eleanor duty during Sunday School which is the best kind of duty.  After church, George came over to their apartment too and we had homemade pizza.  Braeden had me sit and chat with George while he worked on the pizza.  George is completely personable and has clearly had a rough life.  He's lived here there and everywhere and doesn't have any family.  When he found out I'd grown up in Nevada, he told me that he'd lived in Winnemucca awhile.  He had been hitchhiking through and had stopped and worked washing dishes at a casino for several months.

He would ask me about my family and my childhood and my siblings and my children and my parents and he kept marveling at how fortunate I was.  "What a good life!" he said, over and over.  "What a good life!"

I had to agree with him.

Monday, everyone (except me) went swimming at the hotel.  I declared myself there to take care of Eleanor when she was tired of swimming.

But it was hot.  So I changed into my swimsuit and went swimming too.  For me, it has to be really hot to make swimming worth it.  For the rest of my family, there needs to be a body of water available.

I think Eleanor falls in line with the rest of them.  She was a little unsure of the cool water at first:

But soon, she was a happy little fish:

When Braeden was 5, we made a deal with him that he would get a Happy Meal if he would go off the diving board at the pool at Forest Park.  It was a big deal because we were poor and Happy Meals were few and far between.

He was doing underwater somersaults in the pool like his Grandpa Linn taught him.  I said if he could do five in a row I would buy him a Happy Meal.  He did six.

The rest of the day was spent hanging out in the apartment with the AC, lunch at Red Robin, where Eleanor was angelic, and a visit to Target.  My grandma sent them money for clothes and they were thrilled to buy Eleanor some cooler weather clothes for their trip to Washington.  

The Happy Meal wasn't the only childhood throwback.  Earlier they had been talking about how Braeden would never forgive me for getting rid of his Yu-gi-oh Duel Disc Launcher.  (You devote your life to your children and they fixate on the junky toy you threw away....)  It put them in a Yu-gi-oh mood apparently because Mark bought some cards at Target (Braeden already had some--at least I hadn't thrown them away.)  They played Yu-gi-oh.

Adam and I took turns cuddling Eleanor.  I loved how she would nudge her head up to Adam for a kiss.  She is 100% a keeper and it broke my heart to leave her behind.  I told her maybe her parents wouldn't notice if she came home with us.

Anna told me they'd notice.

All too soon we headed to the airport.  I realized on my boarding pass that we were in first class.  Adam is the guy who just quietly does stuff like that to make life better.

I asked him, "Why are you so good to me?"

He smiled and asked, "Why are you so needy?"

We walked and walked and walked in the new and unimproved Salt Lake airport after we landed.  I was SO tired and I just wanted to go to bed and I knew I'd have an early morning.  The airport is all about the hike now.

We got to the curb and there was a huge (think Space Mountain at Disneyland) line for the parking shuttle.  Adam led us on another LONG walk to the parking lot.  We had no idea if it was faster or not and we decided that since we were already doing it, we'd just assume it was faster.  

In for a penny, in for a pound.

Mark was incredibly upbeat the entire walk and kept encouraging us and it was disarming and out of character and needed.

In the car, he played just the music we needed to get us home.  That was very much in character.  We made it home!

I'm still tired.

It was so worth it.

I love Braeden and Anna and Eleanor.

As George proclaimed, "What a good life!"