California Dreaming

During the last week of February, I got to spend nearly a whole week in Southern California with the majority of my family. We all took shelter in my brother and sister-in-law’s new house in Winchester. ‘Twas awesomesauce.

Well, the beginning of the trip was far from the sauce of awesome. Jordan was unable to come, so I flew with Jo solo. We had one layover in Phoenix. When we landed in Phoenix and I went to retrieve my stroller (all while holding a very heavy sleeping dead weight of a son), I saw that my stroller had been placed at the gate and someone even took the time to set it up and open it….one problem, though. It was MISSING A WHEEL! I asked an employee to please retrieve the rouge wheel, as it had most likely fallen off in the plane. Sadly, they looked and declared it MIA, which made my stroller a three wheel piece of useless trash.

Sleeping lug of a kid at the airport.

They checked my stroller to San Diego and offered me a wheelchair to use throughout the Phoenix airport. That didn’t work. I FINALLY got to my gate and miraculously, Jo was still out cold. While I began to relax, the front desk worker got on the microphone and said something along the lines of the following:

“Hey everyone going to San Diego. We just got a weather warning that it is super foggy in San Diego. We MIGHT be able to get on our plane as scheduled and land there, but we MIGHT also have to land somewhere totally different, and no, we have no clue where that might be. There’s also a chance that this flight will get cancelled. Never mind that fact that it is already late at the night and the next flight to San Diego is tomorrow morning IF THERE ARE EVEN SPOTS AVAILABLE. Ok, BYYYYYE!”

Naturally, I did what I do best when my panic and stress collide- I cried. No wailing and sobbing, but enough crying to allow everyone in the gate to give me the side-eye “Is that chick ok” look. Thankfully, a man sitting across from me explained that he was a retired pilot, and based on what he looked up on the fog, it didn’t seem serious and he predicted that my flight would be fine. That calmed me down a little, though I was still so stressed until I FINALLY heard that words from our captain that we were clear to land. Phew.

So after all the pains of flying TO California, the remainder of my time was excellent.

My brother has an amazing backyard. He recently added a patio, a track (or bikes, trikes, and scooters), a bunch of fruit trees, and in-ground trampoline, and a gymnastics bar. Kind of puts our backyard with a nonworking hot tub and garden of weeds to shame. The best part was it was perfectly safe to let Jo wander around with minimal supervision.

It was so fun to see Jo interact with his cousins. All of his cousins from my side were in the same house, so he was never lacking any attention.

One day, we spent the whole morning and afternoon at Oceanside Beach. Jo was so thrilled to be there, that while we were packing up to leave the house to head to the ocean, he kept grabbing my hand saying, “Go BEACH! Go BEACH!”  His high hopes for the beach were met and exceeded. He had a blast! So did I, despite the freeeeeeezing water. Thank goodness for my sister-in-law’s wet suit. I was able to boogie board for the first time in a long time, and it felt great.

I often feel so down when I think of how spread out my family is, but trips like this one help me to feel hope that we can still remain close to one another. I’m so glad my siblings, their families, and my parents made coming to California a priority. I love them all.