Smith Family Blog: 48 & 49

So we did it! We took both of the girls and flew to Columbus, drove 12 hours to The Outer Banks of NC and flew back! It was intense :) Both the girls did well on the plane ride to CMH, but unfortunately Lexi didn't nap as we had hopped. We had even bought her her own seat thinking she would, but no luck. Luckliy the plan was not full, so Josh took Lexi to the row behind us and let her play and read. Sydney was funny, she was watching Super Why and was yelling the answers because she couldn't tell how loud her voice was with her headphones on. When we started to descend, Sydney said it hurt her tummy, but she was fine.

We spent four days in Columbus. We got to spend time with the girls cousins and grandparents, we swam in the pool, celebrated Papa Pat's retirement and spent a lot of time swinging on the porch. From Columbus we drove overnight to NC. The girls did great, but it ended up taking closer to 14 hours as we got stuck in stopped traffic 30 minutes into the drive. Once at the beach house we spent a week playing in the ocean, digging in the sand and finding sea shells.

The trip home was longer, harder and left us exhausted! We woke up, ate breakfast, packed and had to be on the way to the airport by 8:00am. We drove over two hours to Norfolk to drop off our rental car and flew to Detroit. The flight was pretty rough, Lexi was not a happy camper and screamed the last 20 minutes of the flight. We had a super short, 30 min connection, so we basically got off the plane (as fast as you can with two kids, car seats, carry-ons, etc) and ran across the airport to our flight to MSP. That flight was challenging as Amy was with both kids and Josh was across the isle, but both Lexi and Sydney fell asleep for a portion of the flight and the rest we were able to feed them and distract them enough to make it home without any major meltdowns. Whew! We had a good time, but we were SO glad to be back home with space for them to play, toys and baby gates!!

The big highlights were Sydney sleeping in a big bed, seeing the Lighthouse, Mommy boggie boarding, and Lexi finally said dada! We were walking down the stairs at the beach house and mommy said "Lexi, say dada" and then Sydney said dada and then all of a sudden Lexi said Dada.