it's still february?

It feels like I've been gone for a month, but unfortunately it was only a week. I will commend my husband on his choice of weeks for this trip, from what I heard I missed lots of below zero windchills and coldness (I didn't really miss them).

I got to visit my sister and the 3 most adorable kids on the face of the earth:






Noa will be 3 in May, and she already speaks amazingly well and has also perfected her mother's "death stare" (that's her fishy face, it's almost as funny)





Lincoln just turned 1 in November, he's always happy, and also always hungry. Favorite word: please (said "peas") to indicate that he would like something, which is pretty constant.



Cole was born December 19th, he mostly ate and slept while I was there, but he's pretty cute as well, I like him.


It was a most interesting trip, I learned that Dora has a cousin by the name of Diego who apparently rescues all sorts of jungle/rainforest animals:
He also apparently creates in young children the incessant need to watch his videos daily (Noa cried when she found out he had been taken back to the video store).


I also found out that Disney has a Downtown that seems to be family friendly, but also pumps Panic! at the Disco songs and other inappropriate music at high volumes. That was on Pleasure Island (isn't that where Pinnochio got turned into an ass? And people want to go there?) which is all nightclubs, but they also share the music on speakers that you hear clearly in the block or two that it takes to get past it. Then you hit the stores where all you hear are songs from any and every Disney movie imaginable, they must really love extremes there.

The only downside in the entire trip was the actual travel to and from. I was supposed to leave at noon on Feb 3 and arrive just before 8pm. Then my noon flight became a 2pm flight, which didn't actually leave Minneapolis until 5pm because of some valve that wouldn't open and a gauge that wouldn't give the right reading, even tho the other instrumentation was showing that everything was ok. I was bumped from my 4pm flight out of Chicago (defintiely missed that one) to the next one at 7:35, only by the time we got to Chicago, I found out that the 7:35 flight was delayed until 10:45pm. Which meant that I had almost 5 hours all to myself in Chicago-O'Hare airport. Wow, was that exciting. I saw as many terminals as I could reach on foot, and found that the only restaurant that even came close to rivaling Starbucks in number of locations was McDonald's. I lost count, but I'm willing to bet there was at least a dozen each in the 3 or 4 terminals I wandered through. I didn't get to Tampa until after 2:30am. It's a good thing that my sister and her husband are night owls...

Then, on the way back I found that my 10:55am flight had been delayed until 12:25pm, which would mean that I would yet again miss my connection in Chicago. The only other flight to Minneapolis on Saturday was at 7:30pm, and I would be home by 8:45 or so. Instead, they routed me through Dallas, I left at 12:20 and got back home by 7:45. I was originally supposed to land at 3pm. Granted, it was better than the 12+ hrs that it took me to get down there, but I'm finding that as much as I'm looking forward to going to Lima next month, I'm dreading the actual travel itself. At least I won't be alone next time....