Vacation? Part I

I have decided that I am going to have to write this in installments, trying to summarize everything in one post seems a little aggressive. With that said, lets begin....

It seemed like such a good idea. We were going to amortize the impact of flying across the country by having a 2 week east coast trip (basically two trips back to back). One week with my family and bunch of folks that I grew-up with in Iowa City on the beach on Emerald Island in North Carolina. Then we were going to fly up to Connecticut so the kids could meet their great-grandparents. It was going to be great, all of these other people around to help, Tracy and I were going to be able to bask in the sun, take long romantic walks, sleep in, augh the glory.

As any of you with kids know, this is so not the case, our naivete was so cute.... Without getting too far ahead of myself and generalizing the trip. I'll talk about the two days it took us to get to the beach.

Unfortunately there were no direct flights from here to RDU, but I guess baring a few larger airports on the East and West Coasts this is going to be true, lets just say right now we have a no connecting flight rule. It was also our first trip with the kids and we had a TON of stuff. We have a pretty big car now (it is a really big car) and it full, I mean so full that we had to hold stuff in it to make sure that the back was closed, I think that we checked 6 bags plus a carry-on for all of us.

Ava actually was a good travel baby (officially the superwondertravelbabyboo); however Owen well.... what can I say, he has a lot of energy, that is the nicest thing I can say, he was kind of a train wreck. As I am writing this in hindsight and we are back home it is hard to remember the pain and frustration that was Owen, but it was pretty bad.

I have uplaoded video of the travel. The video is pretty long (just over 7 min), but I think it funny :-) and I am sure for those of you with kids not unfamiliar.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7n4kHwjpds