Easter Hols in the States

The very English way of saying vacation is Holiday, so all the cool kids just say "hols." Ours has been fantastic. We hit the ground running, flying into LAX and heading directly to Disneyland with Brad's parents, aka Grammy and Grampy. We scaled back to only two days of the Magic Kingdom, after Aidan passed out at 9am on day 3 of our trip Disneyland Paris last May. But at nearly a year older than the last trip Aidan was having way more fun, and we ended up bumping our tickets up to 3 day passes.

One crazy random thing that happened is running into a guy I knew from working at a church in the San Jose area back in college. It had seriously been like 9 years since I had seen him and Jamie actually recognized him first. So we had a chance to catch up in the line to the new Finding Nemo submarine ride before we parted ways. It was one of those cool moments, where it's like "Hey see you in eternity if I don't see you before," type moments with other believers that you just don't have time/geographic proximity to hang out with more. I often think of all the people I'll get to see again in heaven and how cool it will be to have the time (if it exists there) to hang out with more people. But I digress...


Aidan is an all star at Disneyland! Big Thunder Mountain? No problem. Matterhorn? He liked the "polar bear" (yeti) that was going to eat us on Disneyland Mountain. Splash Mountain? He loved getting wet. And he did the kiddie rides too with just as much enjoyment. By day three he was ready to do the Monster ride, disneyland mountain and the train all again. As we finally got in the car to head back to Kingsburg Aidan was chatting about all his adventures. After a brief pause, my mom turned around to ask him a question and he was passed out in the carseat. Disneyland: Done.


Equally as awesome was our time at my parent's homestead in Central California, outside of Kingsburg, home of Sun Maid raisins. My dad has constant puttering projects to do outside and Aidan became his little helper the whole time. So Aidan got to drive the tractor, mow the lawn, pick up tools, take the rubbish bins to the end of the driveway and even got to take a trip to the hardware store. After about day 3 of being at home, Aidan says, "Grampy, you're like Bob the Builder," which my dad took as the highest compliment he could receive.


After some awesome time at the Forbes' homestead we headed up to the PNW and spent Saturday/Easter Sunday with Jamie's best friend from high school, Krista and her brood. It is always fun to hang out with them because they are just really cool people and enjoy a nice bottle of wine as well. And Jamie's parents drove over from Pulman and spent Easter with us as well. It was a good time for Aidan to hang out with some other kids after spending a week being indulged by grandparents. One odd thing that happened was when we arrived I heading in for a nap after waking up at 5am to make our flight to Seattle. When I woke up, my eye was all gunky and sure enough I had pink eye. Gross and random. But fortunately, just as random, Krista's dad is an optometrist so Kirsta just called him up and I spoke with him long enough for him to call in a prescription to a local Walgreens for eye meds. Awesomely convenient.

Despite the sickness, time with the Schei's was awesome. Easter was wild, as their church put on rock and roll church for Easter, for better or worse. It was a bit overwhelming and I realized how out of touch I was as they opened the service with the new U2 song which I had no clue was a U2 song. It was certainly rocking with a standard gospel presentation as the sermon. Coolest part was seeing people getting baptized on Easter sunday and they had like 60 people getting dunked. It always reminds me of this one description of baptism from the 3rd or 4th century about how intense their baptism service was: Baptism only on Easter, All night prayer vigil, excorcism, and naked dunking, so seperate guy/girl baptisms. Crazy intense, but certainly an unforgettable experience in one's spiritual life.

After the weekend with the Scheis we rounded out our time with the 'hood. It was just a great time to spend with friends that we haven't seen, spend some time experiencing home stuff, and getting some personal business taken care of; i.e. Dentist, doctor, optometrist stuff. Oli went to the doctor and continued progressing along his waifish weight. The doctor gave the pretty funny comment of, "Well...he's on the chart now!" And fortunately he is super healthy all around even as a svelt looking little toddler. Dentist visits were awesome for everyone but Jamie, who amazingly got her first cavity at age 30! Impressive or annoying, depending how you look at it.

Most fun was having a little get together BBQ to celebrate Jamie's 30th birthday and the chance to catch a Mariners game with the boys which was preceded by Happy Hour at the Melting Pot with my wife! It was so great to see Aidan getting the opportunity to play with everyone in the hood and we look forward to the day we move back! But not today... :)

Cheers!

P.S. So we would be remiss if we didn't have a Mack and Jacks before we left. We never got the opportunity during the week, so we ended up having pints at the Africa Lounge, the Mack and Jack's dedicated bar, at Sea Tac. It was a great way to finish of a vacation from which we needed a vacation :)

P.P.S. Sorry still no pictures, I hope you enjoy text!