The Brown Family, Horse, Architecture and Beach Retreat. Part 2: Planes

Ask me if I was nervous to take Elanora on a one and a half hour plane ride... Oh man, was I ever. Our sweet baby girl is just that, a sweet baby girl and a happy one to boot. She hardly ever cries (who would have thought, remember that one time she cried for the first 3 months of her life?). She smiles and says hi to everyone and she'll let anyone hold her. Just an all around pleasant baby (brag much? You bet!). That being said, she's a wild child! She never stops moving. All day long she runs around the house, until she drops for a nap :)
The 2 million people who had a flight departing from the Salt Lake airport the day we left can attest to this. For 2 straight hours, while we waited for our flight, my little free spirit walked up and down the terminals saying hi and laughing at every single person that walked by. Chris and I had to work in shifts to keep up with her. People kept saying "Boy, she is going to sleep well on the flight" I would smile and nod, not wanting to alarm any of the other passengers, knowing full well that this baby was in no way going to fall asleep on the plane. In fact, I've never been able to cuddle and rock this baby to sleep and unfortunately this plane ride would be no exception.

Luckily for us she's wild but happy. The plane ride went smooth, mostly because we had a backpack full of wonder and amusement for her. It had about 300 different items to entertain. Out of the hundreds of items in the bag, she only wanted the story books, coloring book and of course the treats. 3 seconds into the flight, she was completely done with those items. She did love to open and close the airplane visor over the window. That activity made up 85% of the flight. Over all she was her happy, cute little self.
The last time I was in Cali, the excitement of Disneyland and my adolescence, fogged my vision, blurring out everything but Donald and Daisy Duck(I prefer them to Minnie and Micky). As our plane landed in LAX and the fear of flying with a wild child, however irrational it had been had subsided, my eyes were wide open, my vision clear. Talk about sensory overload!!!
The airport was huge, loud, bright, palm treesy and crowded, in no particular order. More like all at once, all of that craziness smashing into my craziness. Yikes! I have a touch of the agoraphobia...mostly the fear of crowds. This tends to drive Chris crazy because he's a people person. I like to watch people(in a non creepy way)from a distance but please, oh please, back up out of my bubble. Sometimes we can't eat at restaurants if there are too many people. My anxiety level shoots through the roof. Poor Chris.
Chris likes to keep a schedule. The itinerary he had planned for us said we needed to immediately get the rental car. So he was pulling, rushing through crowds of people. I was shrinking smaller and smaller, maybe going slower and slower because not only do I hate crowds I also hate being on time and rushed. I like to float through life half a minute behind...this little fact about me drives Chris bonkers, along with I can't spell to save my life. These are the only things about me that drive him crazy :) Anyway, we were quick stepping through the airport, grabbed our luggage, got on a bus to go to the car rental place and did it all in record time. As we were sitting on the bus, I'm having a sensory overload moment and Chris is sighing in relief that we're on schedule. All at once, at the exact same time, Chris and I look at each other and we realize, "Oh crap,...we forgot the baby!" JUST KIDDING...of course we didn't forget the baby, but we did forget the car seat base that we had checked in at the airport. The car seat doesn't have a hole in the bottom of it to feed the seatbelt through, nope we needed the base. Darn it. So we got to the rental place, rented a car,

Yeah right!!...me being the cheap-o that I am would never let us rent this car (we had a moderately priced charcoal grey Impala). We left the rental car in the parking lot, jumped back on the shuttle bus to LAX(because we didn't have a car seat base...remember?), grabbed the carseat base then jumped on another shuttle bus and headed back to the rental car place. Now we were on our way...except for the 2 hours it took to get our digital TomTomm set up and figured out. (Ask me why we didn't use our GPS on our phones...oh wait I'm the cheap-o who won't let us rent a Lamborghini and the Cheap-o who won't let us have smart phones). Now our adventure could begin!