Heading Out and The Tallest Thermometer in the World

Our vacation was awesome.  There are lots of pictures.  I don't feel like loading them all at once and doing a marathon blog post, so I will be putting up a few at a time as my schedule permits.

The first day was a little stressful.  Ross and I got the car all packed and ready while Emma was at school.  When we picked up her and Sara from school, we headed out.  We dropped Molly off with my parents and hit the road.  For a couple of hours, at least.  When we stopped for a potty break and to find some jerky (since we had neglected to purchase that road trip essential before) we found that our car wouldn't start.  Awesome.  Fortunately, he have a handy jumper set that my parents got us for Christmas a few years back.  This happened the next time we stopped for gas.  From then on, we just left the car running whenever we had to make a stop, which was every couple of hours because of Mr. Luke and the tiny bladders in the back seat.  We finally got into Vegas and our hotel around 10:00 pm, which was really 11:00 for us due to gaining an hour at the time zone border.  

When everyone else was sleeping, I spent my night doing a load of laundry at the hotel's laundry facilities because Jack had a horrible poopsplosion at one point during the trip.  Poor little dude was covered, and my arsenal of wipes just couldn't cut it.  We bathed him good, and I washed everyone's clothes from that day to fill out the load.  It's a good thing we did too, because it turned out that Luke's bag of clothes never made it into the car, so all he had for the trip was the onesie he wore, and the extra onesie in his diaper bag.  Good job, Mom!  Oh well.  Luckily, some of my friends were up late, and they kept me entertained on facebook until all the clothes were dried and re-packed.

The next day started out early as we hit the road for San Diego.  The funniest part of the morning was that our hotel was just off the strip, so we could see all kinds of fun things from our hotel room like a pyramid, palm trees, flashing lights, a statue of liberty, roller coasters, and more.  Despite all of those amazing things, the item that caught Emma's attention most while gazing out our window was, "Mom, look!  That is a real Taxi with people getting in!"  I guess she thought that only happened in movies.  Funny girl!

 We stopped in Baker to get some gas, and drove through the main street to get back on the freeway when Ross read a sign that said, 'World's Tallest Thermometer'.  When he said that, I stopped and turned the van around.  He asked what I was doing, and I said "I am getting a picture in front of the tallest thermometer in the world!"  And we did.  The kids were sleeping or I would have let them join in on the fun as well.

 It was pretty spectacular, I'm not gonna lie!  You should be super jealous.