Awesome Holiday trip

We had a fantastic trip to TX/LA to visit Jamie's side of the family.  We left early the day after Christmas and came home New Years Eve.  We had an awesome time, so much fun! 

Ev insisted loved getting his own bag this time and loved pulling it...and especially being goofy with it.  It was super helpful as things got a little stressful finding a parking place.  Both economy and long term parking were full.  Finally we got the guard at long term parking to let us go look for ourselves and we found one!

On the plane, ready to take off!

Ev absolutely loves playing with Blake and Aiden.  He had a great time playing with them, even if he did end up with a pretty good rug burn from this game.

Mimi made all the kids chef hats and apron's for Christmas.  Ev loved his, even wearing it on our drive home. He only took it off when I made him at the rest stop (sorry you can't pee with your apron on).

Chilling at our stop on the way to Mimi and Papa Van's house.

We discovered Sci-port in Shreveport.  It was awesome, we had such a good time.  We thought it was funny to pose by the red-ear slider since, "they only had one turtle which is pretty lame compared to Grandpa's turtles."

I think Jamie and Ev could have played with the lock demo for hours....

Driving a riverboat!

Ev loved the fireplace.  Not only is it warm but it's the best stage ever!

To say Ev got spoiled would be an understatement.  Southern made doughnuts (hot) every morning with sprinkles.  But who I am kidding, I was just as excited about them as Ev was.

 

Because our family lives 1800 miles away pretty much all our travel means going to TX/LA. So, we are trying to incorporate at least one "vacation element" into each trip.  This time it was a trip to AT&T stadium (cowboy stadium) since Everett is pretty much the biggest 6 year old football fan on earth.  I had done my research and  figured since we didn't know exactly when we were going to make it to Arlington the best plan was to do the self-guided tour.  I checked the schedule and it all looked really simple and something we didn't need to pre-buy tickets for.  Ev was ridiculously excited about this!  As we pulled up to the stadium Jamie and I got a little nervous,.  I had forgotten that the cotton bowl was there in just a couple of days and there was a line out front.  We soon found out that there were no self-guided tours this week (a fact they didn't put on their website) and that only a limited number of the VIP tours were available.  So, we got in line.  Even though we are in Texas it was cold (high 30's), we waited for about an hour and started prepping Ev for the fact that we might not get tickets.  As the line moved we started feeling better, we were the next ones up and then an announcement came over the loud speaker...they were sold out.  Just to be sure I still went up to the window to check and the girl in the window asked how old Ev was.  I said 6 and she said that was too bad because they had two tickets left and kids 5 and under didn't need a ticket.  Not going to lie, we were feeling pretty desperate right about then.  Like I can't describe how excited Ev was about this and to be so close.....  So I did what any good parent would do.  Totally got my pathetic teary pregnant mom look on and asked her if I could "tell her if Ev was 5 instead?"  Jamie chimed in with the "we came all the from Oregon and are leaving tomorrow." Thankfully the girl took pity on us and sold us the two adult tickets and a minor ticket for Everett.  Crisis averted.

Selfie on the field!

Ev totally did not care about the cheerleaders locker room at all.
Like we made him pose for this and he just wanted to leave...too much girl stuff! 

He had to get a picture by Tony Romo's locker.

Doing interviews in the press room.

So funny story, about the time we hit the locker room (1 1/2 hours into the tour) Ev informed me that he really really really had to go potty.  We are in the Cowboys locker room..ummm there are no public bathrooms even close.  So as the rest of the tour group moved on I faced another parenting dilemma.  Cross the rope blocking off the player's bathrooms and let my kid (whose aim is not all that great) pee in the Cowboys toilets.....or risk him having an accident on the cotton bowl field?  Decided to risk it with the field and he made it to the end thank goodness!

When we stopped for lunch on the way back to DFW Ev found a rack of cowboy hats and was trying to talk me into getting him one since "he's grown out of his at home." He picked out this one.......it took everything we had to not laugh, umm yeah, not in Oregon kid.  But it looked cute so we compromised and took a picture. 

On the flight home there were a ton of unaccompanied minors.
As a result Ev got an Alaska air color book which was pretty cool.