Barfing Babies and Burning Brakes

Yep, my aunt always gives me a hard time of these kinds of photos, but when your hubby is paranoid a stranger would steal your camera after snapping your photo and the timer one you took makes yourself look like a blimp, this is the photo you post.

Yep, that is how I would summarize our family trip to Big Bear Lake, CA.  The whole goal was to get Jason his TWIC card from Long Beach.  We rented a cabin in Big Bear because I'd never been there and we thought it would be somewhere new and nice for our family to spend time together.  Here's the trip synopsis by pros and cons.

PROS

nice shot of the belly, huh?

• The cabin had a hot tub.  Ooh, I want to save every penny I can and get us one of those!  I felt more relaxed and slept better than I had since I found out I was pregnant due to that thing.
• The cable didn't work for the first day there (on the second day, Johnny, yes, you heard me right, Johnny fixed it), so we got lots of family time.  I never realized what kind of time sucker that was for our family until it was gone and Jason was following me around.
• We went to the animal park up there and got to see some great mountainous animals like bears, wolves, bald eagles, etc.  You know, those ones that don't hang out in Gilbert.



This is the closest I got to a photo of Johnny and an animal.  I swear he's checking them out in this shot. 

• Johnny slept in every day, we're not sure if it was the cooler evenings or what.  One day, he didn't get up until 9!  However, I had been up for two hours assuming he was just about to wake up. 

All pooped out since nap time got messed up with both long drives.

CONS

• It was hotter in LA than it was in Phoenix!  Yes, you heard it right.  We were in San Bernadino when they set a record of 110 degrees on October 1st!  It was absurd.  And I'm sorry, but I always find LA pretty disgusting and the heat did not improve matters at all.
• Road tripping with a toddler is different than with a 6 month old. Johnny was a good sport, but between him and me, we were on the "slow boat to China" route.
• On the way down the mountain to get to Long Beach, Johnny puked.  That's always fun.  And parents of toddlers don't pack extra outfits or anything.  So, luckily, he'd had a coat on, so we removed that he white-trashed it (what Jason calls shirt and diaper, but no pants) until we could get to a WalMart and buy him some pants and Dramamine for the remainder of the trip.  (The pro of that entire situation is somehow he got most all of the puke on himself and car seat.  So we were able to eliminate smell completely afterward!)
• About 5 minutes after the barfing debacle, the brakes on the truck started smoking!  I am not kidding.  I just started laughing.  We had a 10:30 appointment in Long Beach on a Monday morning (yes, you guessed right, Jason scheduled it), still weren't in the actual LA area where we would know how rush hour traffic was going to treat us and we now had a sick toddler and burning brakes.  Jason used my water jug to pour wateron them and since we were just about down the mountain, we were okay once we got on freeway.  He still doesn't know what the problem was, as in 11 years and almost 300,000 miles that truck has never burned brakes until that precise, fortuitous moment.

All in all though, we had a great time. We made a lot of memories and had a great time relaxing with each other. Until the next time we venture beyond state boundaries, we'll have to live off the memories of this vacation.