THE CLAMPETTS HIT SAN DIEGO

After a 3 hour and 12 minute plane ride, we landed in the beautiful and much cooler San Diego. This was Colson's first plane ride and he acted like he wasn't scared at all and I actually don't think he was. He's scared of a shark in our swimming pool and of someone breaking into our well locked house but for some reason a huge, 16 ton piece of metal floating through the sky seemed completely normal to him. Not that I wanted him to be scared, quite the contrary, but I assumed he would be very nervous and he wasn't. We DID have our first meltdown as we were boarding the plane. I was happy we lasted that long. Calli wanted to sit by the window and I let Colson since he had never flown before and this was Calli's 3rd trip on a plane. I assured her she could have the seat by the window on the flight home but "the skyline is so much prettier to look at when you are landing then when you are taking off". What?!?!? 

All was well on the flight and we found Hilary easily. Her and Kate had come to take us into captivity for the week. So it was our first night in town and they decided to throw a big party for us. Ok, so it's a party that they have every Sunday, but we said it was just for us. We loaded up on bikes and traveled across town (all 9 of us) to "A Concert in the Park". Did I mention we were on bikes? Did I mention that we were all on bikes? All but Sarah (who is 2 1/2) and she rode in a seat on the back of Hilary's, who was also pulling a tag along thing that kids could actually sit in but we had all our food, blankets, etc in it. Did I mention that both my kids thought this was really cool? Colson in particular! Once we got to the park, he spent half of the time riding the bike around the park. I guess I should get our bike back from Grandma's. I wouldn't be surprised if he thought riding the bikes to the park was the coolest part of the trip.

We enjoyed a nice evening out in the beautiful weather, listening to some good live music, enjoying food and meeting some of Hilary and Rome's very nice friends! All military families. The bond, connection and support among these people is really awesome.

We settled donw about 11:30 pm which is 1:30 am Conroe time and all three of us slept on a blow up bed in the middle of Hilary's living room....talk about intruding! But they are so gracious to be so delighted to have us. And what's really crazy is that we slept with the front door open. They do have a screen door and it locks but Rome says that's how they sleep every night. The front and back door stay open and it creates a nice breeze throughout the house. It WAS nice and what seemed very strange at first turned into very old fashioned in a good way. I would have never thought that I'd be sleeping with the door open in San Diego California.