Nebraska Stay-cation

We decided this year to have our family vacation at home in Nebraska.  We went to Kansas City two summers ago and then Colorado last year, and Nebraska seemed like a good fit for this year.  We were excited to make the farm into a vacation.  We all love coming home so we knew this wouldn't be difficult.  We decided to plan a lot of different things so that it felt like a vacation.  Our days were pretty busy: Husker Stadium tour, day at the lake, picnic, pedicures/golfing, farmers market, Japanese steak house, spike ball, antique shop, Omaha Zoo, fishing, eating, eating, and more eating.  :)  After all was said and done, our favorite thing was when we just hung out at the farm.  I guess being at the farm is vacation enough.  We had a great time all being together.  Things have definitely changed around the Eberspacher house with the addition of babies as they are our main focus and source of entertainment.  Those grand babies sure do get spoiled, and we can't wait for grand baby number three to arrive in September.  It was a wonderful trip and again Dakota did a great job on the drive there and back.

California trip

While Patrick climbed four 14ers with his bible study guys; Dakota, Erin, and I made the trip to California for our cousin's wedding.  Dakota had a momentary meltdown on the plane that required me to walk the isle with a screaming baby until she fell asleep.  I felt the need to apologize to all the sleeping passengers until I remembered that it was one o'clock in the afternoon and did they really need to be taking a nap. :)  Erin insists that it was only about 5 minutes of crying, but it seemed like an eternity to me. All we could really do was laugh.  In mid-flight, I gave Dakota some Motrin to possibly help with 'teething.'  I am sure this looked good as I syringed it into her mouth for all the other passengers to see.  Despite that 5-10 minute loss of sanity, Dakota did pretty well.  It could have been worse.

We met up with Mom, Dad, Eric, and Ellie at the LA airport.  This was a unique trip because it was all of the siblings minus the spouses, like the old days but with Dakota. :)   We headed to the car rental place where we were met with a line that wrapped around the building due to their system shutting down.  After 2 1/2 hours of standing in line, we finally got our van, and we were ready to head out.  We were then met with crazy (aka: the normal) LA traffic which extended our drive from 2 hours to 4 hours before we made it to the mountain town of Idyllwild, California.  We all agreed that we hated LA and were glad to get out of the city.  Dakota was a champ and was full of lots of smiles and giggles for all the backseat passengers.

We stayed with the Molines in a beautiful, big house where we enjoyed having meals together, talking outside on the patio, and soaking in the hot tub.  We went to Justin and Brittany's wedding on Saturday which was very beautiful, sweet, personal, and  God-honoring.  We had a great time celebrating with them, and we were so blessed to be able to make this trip.

The next day was spent doing some sight-seeing in Idyllwild, traveling back to LA, and then going to the beach in the evening.  This was Dakota's first experience with sand and the cold ocean water which was not very enjoyable for her.  We left the next morning and this time Aunt Ellie flew back with us.  The flight back was maybe a little better but Dakota still had the couple minutes of crying before she fell asleep.  I guess this is just inevitable for her now that she doesn't fall asleep peacefully while being held.

We had a great trip but we were glad to get back to Patrick (aka: rugged mountain man).  We missed Lauren, Nora, and Lou on this trip, but looked forward to the Eberspacher family trip at end of July.