Air Miles

On Wednesday June 13th our family embarked on a trip to Illinois to visit the Jones family for a surprise retirement/birthday party for Grandma Cathy. We flew into Bloomington, IL which was 2 or so hours from Jesse's hometown of LaHarpe. It was a long day of travel but Jerex is a fearless flyer. This was his 3rd time flying and he seems to be a natural traveler (moreso than daddy who always seems to get frisked by TSA and gets in trouble for flying with full size tubes of toothpaste).

At DEN airport security, Jesse snapped this picture of us - yes we took up the ENTIRE ROW of the x-ray belt!! We were those annoying people with kids that in my past life of business traveler, I would scan for and avoid getting in line behind! There were many an impatient foot-tapping business man waiting in line behind us, checking their watches and giving us the stink eye:

Babies don't travel light...

Being in an airport with a baby is an interesting experience, and since both Jesse and I have traveled so much on our own for work and for fun it is definitely a different type of stress that is experienced when babies are on board. Take for instance, timing out feedings and diaper changes. We got the airport in plenty of time and made our way to our gate. The Denver airport bathrooms have those extremely noisy air hand dryers and well that set Jerex off! He screamed and cried and fussed the whole time in the bathroom b/c of the roaring hand dryers and I can't say I blame him - I hate them too! Then, we were waiting at the gate for our flight (in my head, I'm congratulating myself b/c we are 15 minutes early - so not too early - his diaper is changed and we're ready to board and my master plan is WORKING! YAH!) I had timed out his feedings so that he would need to eat again right upon takeoff, which is of course the recommended time to feed a baby so that they are swallowing and ears popping while climbing in elevation.

Of course our flight was 15 minutes delayed and so my master plan didn't exactly work out, but isn't that what always happens?! Jerex needed to eat before boarding, poor starving baby:

Can't you tell by his chubby cheeks that he's regularly deprived of food? Yes, all that stuff is ours. Except the McDonald's sack.

On the actual plane Jerex did great, he does this thing where he sticks out his tongue and makes the "bbbthhhh" sound and sprays spit everywhere and that was what he did most of the flight, luckily only Jesse and I were in our row of seats so were were the only inhabitants of "The Spray Zone". Grandpa Jay and Grandma Cathy picked us up and we enjoyed 4 fun days in LaHarpe which I'll post more on later!