Michigan and travel mercies

Addison and I just took the quickest trip to go see our friends Heidi, Mark, Ava, and Kaiya up in Grand Rapids, MI this week. Heidi and I have known each other since 5th grade (almost 20 years!) and any chance to see her and her precious family will not be passed up. Since she is now pregnant with her third little one due in March and Graham is due in just 10 weeks (ohmygoodness), we figured we better get this trip in while we still can!

When I booked this plane ticket a few weeks ago, I thought how great it was that I could still fly free with Addison. Now I realize that THERE IS NO REASON any third tri-mester pregnant person should ever think it's a good idea to fly with a 17 month old in their lap!

I called Continental the night before we left to see what the likelihood of her getting her own seat (free) would be and she told me it looked like I was in good shape with 10 seats still open. Monday morning when we boarded the plane I had to sweet talk the gate agent to give me the LAST seat available over the other wishful moms. Thank you God.

We came prepared...

All the nutritional rules were out the window for these three hours...

Her first ring pop...a huge mess. Glad Andy wasn't there for that one, he would have had a coronary.

Disclaimer: Had to take the point and shoot because lugging one more thing including a big camera was out of the question.

Love the convenience, but not so much the blurriness. =)

It was worth every bit of it to get to see our friends though!!!

Mark, Ava, and Addison

Mark decided to give Ava and Addison cooking lessons on how to cut a potato.

Getting some love from Heidi and Sherriff (who happens to be our dog, Harley's brother!). Addison LOVED him.

On Tuesday we got to go to an orchard where they had the most delicious apples and DONUTS....made from scratch. Delicious.
Checking out the goods....pumpkin, apple sugar, hard to choose!

Look at them apples! Honey crisp Michigan apples are the best!

I don't think Addison and I have had a picture together (that wasn't professionally taken) in over 6 months! Thanks Heidi!

Ava checking out the cute pumpkins
This was our best attempt at getting them to stay in one place together long enough to take a picture. Ava was much better at this than Addison. It cracks me up that Addison looks almost the same height as Ava and she's a year younger.
Addie was so excited about the place that she busted her lip while running. Forget the ice pack, just give me the doughnut.

Don't think I've ever seen a real honest to goodness apple tree before this.
Picking out pumpkins with Mark




Heidi and sweet Kaiya
If I had a picture of me running away from the bees, it would be better...

Delicious!

Thank you Dekorne's for a wonderful trip...even if it was shorter than we would have liked.

Quick story about our return flight....

We were supposed to leave on the 5:30pm flight to Houston on Thursday. Wednesday night when I called to check on seat availability, they told me it was overbooked and even if I wanted to buy her a seat, there was no chance. I was sweating it.

I prayed to God to just handle it. At 3am on Thursday morning Addison woke up crying and threw everything out of the pack and play. I thought it was just time to get up because I didn't have a watch on me. When I realized what time it was, I was dumbfounded. My child loves her sleep, what the heck was she up for? I tried to get her to settle down and go back to sleep for over an hour. No luck at all.

I finally called Continental to check on earlier flights. The only one was at 6:30 am. We took it. I hated having to leave early and am so grateful for Heidi driving us to the airport. There were plenty of seats on this flight however and Addison was wide awake for the entire thing. God works in mysterious ways! I would much rather be woken up at 3am than have a fit-to-be-tied over tired 17 month old in my 7 month pregnant lap on an express jet. Again, thank you God!