Travelling with 6

So I’ve come to realize that my story won’t ever be told in full!  After leaving the camera behind in Tacoma and shortly after it arrived home my iPod decided to take a dive for the worse.  It lost all of it’s memory, leaving behind all my notes of our trip except for the first 2 days of me writing on paper.  I guess the photos of our trip will be telling the story and I will try fill in some blanks…

So it’s 1 day to go before our vacation.  I discovered I am not at all like my mom.  She would’ve had everything packed or almost packed 1 week prior.  I haven’t even lifted a finger and reality I had zero desire to even pick up a suitcase to fill.  My dear husband drove out to pick up a coffee for me to give me some more motivation.  It wasn’t overly successful, but not totally unsuccessful either.  I managed to get 3/4 kids suitcases going.  Of course I allow the 3 older ones to start their own packing and I see what they put in there….So Mr. E packs himself 3 shorts, 1 undie, 1 blankie, and 1 pair of pj’s.  He promptly zips the suitcase shut and says  “Done Mom!”  Of course with a  huge smile on his face.  Don’t worry I turned it into a lesson and taught him how to pack the rest.  Our oldest managed to pack relatively well!  And the second was just as motivated as I……..so that tells you how that packing went.  And that ended the packing scenario for the day. So much for the coffee boost getting me going…

Day 1
Travel day
Somehow I managed to have the packing all done by noon.  Nothing like the excitement of a vacation to get me going in the morning.  Believe me I’m not a morning person!
So 8 suitcases were stuffed full plus another 5 bags/back packs.  We somehow managed to stick all that in our van along with a cooler and a stroller.  Not a whole lot of room for 4 children and 2 parents mind you.

You see we had to fit all this in our minivan…..
D came home on time from work and we were off to pick the girls up slightly early from there school day…..they were out for a run by the river and we were going to pick them up at the finish line.  As we are approaching there destination we see all the busses driving by…..oh no we missed them.  They’re probably on the bus and we don’t have much time to spare….Well thankfully a few staff stayed behind to keep our daughters at the finish and so we managed to squish everyone in for the drive to the airport.

We made one stop on the way to the airport to run around and get out the jiggles.  Next stop the airport. Driving up the dizzying ramp we found a parking spot relatively close to the elevators.  I busily am taking notes of our parking spot as I was to pick the mini van up alone on our way back.  I really didn’t want to get lost in the massive parking lot.

So now we had to unstuff the van and somehow fit it onto those airport carts….remember I said 8 suitcases, 5 bags……well we also needed to pack on the cart 3 booster seats and 1 car seat.  Yes this is a sight to see. Unfortunately the real camera didn’t come out for that photo and you remember the loss of memory on my other device…so I will leave it up to your imagination what we looked like tromping through the Seattle airport.  Let’s just say we all didn’t fit in 1 elevator.

Thankfully we have a frequent flyer in our family so we went straight into the MVP line.  The kids behaved well on our late flight receiving pins, extra chocolate and extra snacks.

 

All on the airplane excited to go!

Thankfully our flight was uneventful.  2/4 kids finally fell asleep pretty much when we landed in San Fransico. Of course we had to awaken them to get out of the plane.  We once again had to balance all our suitcases and children, wave down our ride to our hotel.  Guess what….we didn’t all fit in the hotel vehicle.  So I made it to the hotel with 4 kids and a good part of our luggage while D was left behind at the airport.  Our driver was really good and helped unload all our luggage.  Once we settled everyone into our hotel room, Mr. J bashed his head and that sent everyone off to bed for a good nights rest.

Day 2

Everyone slept in!!!! Yay.  Mr. E did wake up in a panic…No one’s here to take me to the pool.    Don’t worry we went for breakfast in the hotel lobby first and then picked up our motorhome before the kids went for a swim.

Finishing up breakfast

This is how Ms. A babysits.  Keeps the little guy out of trouble.

This is to be our ride for the next few days….

And that ends my notes from our trip.

Loving the new ride! The booster seats lasted about one day.  They were so tippy on the seats I thought they would do more harm then safety.  Just the little guy was in his car seat for the remainder of the trip.

Kids posing after we drove over the famous bridge…..

Handy we have a child who can take photos of us now.
Some stranger was willing to take our family photo.  This is significant to us as D’s grandfather painted a picture of it.  We have it hanging in our front entrance.  Now we can say we’ve seen it and drove on it and so the painting becomes more alive??

Just slightly windy out there on the bridge.

The view of San Francisco

Our first camping destination choice wasn’t working out so well for us.  We had determined that no one would be camping at this time of year so we wouldn’t need to reserve any campgrounds….well guess what our first choice campground was full and no Wal-Mart parking lots were around to stop at.  We did a little phoning and found a different campground that we ended up in the overflow area.  But we could still hear the ocean waves crashing in the night.  What a way to fall asleep at night!

Day 3

This is the area we woke up in the morning.  Nothing beats waking up beside the ocean where the sand is endless and fun to run and roll in.  We however never spent to much time at any destination as we had many miles to cover on the coastal highway.  So after a little fun we pushed the buttons for the push outs and hit the road again.

We made a stop at Fort Ross.  Well the 3 oldest and D toured around while the little guy had a nice nap all nice and toasty warm inside the motorhome.

Despite our children wearing shorts I couldn’t take on there bravery.  I wore my pants most days.  They were determined that it was warm!  California is warm!! (???)

Here we are at the Point Arena Lighthouse.  The tallest Pacific Coast Lighthouse.  Our second oldest was terrified of climbing up all those stairs.  She made it to as high as she was allowed to go. Our oldest daughter was the only one permitted to go outdoors and take a walk around.  I think if you were any smaller you’d be blown over from the crazy winds out there.

We had a good day and our motorhome was parked at our destination of choice that night in MacKerricher St. Park.  I’m also sure there were more interesting stories to be told….so hopefully our photos are fine and telling a story on there own.

I’m being requested so the remainder of the trip will be blogged soon!