No Man's Land

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Tomorrow night we fly out, officially marking the start of our big adventure. For the past two weeks, however, we have been in "no man's land." We had to move out of our house as it was rented out and have been crashing with relatives ever since. We have spent most of our time at Grandpa Tom's apartment. This proved to be quite an easy transition for the kids as we were able to take their own mattresses and bedding to sleep on the floor with, plus the fact that Grandpa Tom (a.k.a. Papa) had taken our couch and coffee table when we moved out. There was a lot of familiarity which I think helped a lot. I was curious to see how we'd do all sleeping in one room (the living room) together, and I was pleasantly surprised! The kids seemed to like knowing that mommy and daddy were right there and they surprisingly didn't roll onto each other's beds causing World War III, despite their mattresses being right next to each other. The only problem was that we could only go to bed when Papa was willing to shut himself up in his room all night, so Jake's usual bedtime of 7:30pm was usually pushed out to more like 9pm. He partly made up for it with longer naps but it still made for a super cranky toddler by the end of the day!

After a few days we drove seven hours or so up the coast to Aunty Vicky and Uncle Ernie's house in Sonoma to see all of Scott's relatives up there and to drop off my minivan to be stored. Both kids took a very late and long car nap, which made the car ride easy but we certainly paid for it later! After dinner and introducing the kids to their dog (they weren't keen at all!) we decided that 10:30pm would be a good bedtime. We did stories and milk and pajamas and then all got into bed. Jakey jumped straight up and started running around the room like a crazy person. Kyla was trying to sleep but, in the end, Jake's hyperactivity got the better of her and she joined in too. No matter what we did we just couldn't settle them to sleep. It ended how all these things tend to end, with screaming and kicking until he finally gave up and went to sleep! It was gone 1am by this point!

The subsequent nights were pretty much back to normal (I made sure there was no dessert around too, which was part of Jake's craziness the first night) but we still never managed to get to bed any earlier than 9pm. Still, between crankiness, we had some fun times at the playground in Sonoma square, visiting the mini theme park Train Town, and watering the plants in Vicky and Ernie's gorgeous back yard.

After a few days we felt like the kids' energy levels were wearing thin on our hosts so it was time to head back down to Santa Barbara. We bid farewell to Hondie and all crammed into Papa's car. The backseat was pretty crowded with two car seats taking up most of it but it wasn't as bad as I'd thought. The kids did really well and even managed to nap at the appropriate time. We only had two real breaks: one at Denny's for lunch, and one at a playground in Pismo Beach.

For the remaining week, we divided and conquered. One of us would take the kids to a playground while the other ran a seemingly endless list of errands. Papa even took the kids to the playground for a couple of hours one afternoon and we did a final pack. It was all living out of backpacks at this point!

On our final weekend we had an informal get together with a ton of friends. I'd had plans to meet up individually with so many friends for lunch once Scott was off work but the time just slipped away and it didn't happen. This seemed the easiest way to meet up with everyone to say bye. We did it at Padaro Grill of course! We had a great turn out but of course I forgot to take photos until the very end when most people had gone home!



Our last full day in Santa Barbara I got to visit a friend and her less than one day old baby in the hospital before visiting Wanda to say goodbye, followed by a quick playtime at the courthouse. Then it was time for dinner and bed. I'm still up trying to finish this with painfully slow uploads of the photos so I'm about to give up and get some sleep before our flight tomorrow. Night night!



*** For more photos scroll all the way down ***

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