Tahoe!

We spent a week by Lake Tahoe with the San Jose Cousins to study the lives of off-season yuppies. The trip was a 6.5 hour drive (as in time actually spent on the road) and we were quite pleased to find out how easy car trips are these days. We read books, played pretend games, sang songs, ate weird food, peed by the side of the road, drew pictures and generally made very good time. Sleep cycles were thrown a bit out of whack, but that is an easy, no-questions trade for babies who don't want to be in a car seat and want to nurse all the time.

The kids were Super Excited to spend more time with baby Kiyo (and, um, her minders, of course).
They danced for her, sang for her, cuddled her, provided tummy time surfaces for her to lay on and were generally thrilled by her existence even during her rare fussy moments. Finn even doled out some pithy parenting advice while covering his ears with his hands to block out the sounds of crying baby: "Hurry up with that boob! That baby's hungry!" and a slightly panicked "Bounce her! Bounce her! She's not happy!"

Larkin made fast friends with another 4.5 year old who was staying in the same complex as us... a short, flurried exchange of cards is presumably in the works.

Elly and Janelle, bless their fuzzy little hearts, also gave Emile and I several opportunities to flee from the condo and its inherent chaos to take hikes at normal adult speeds and/or loll about in a coffee shop. They made up several brand new pretend games and spent lots of quality time in the hot tub with the kids. No value can be set on adults ready to play (almost) all the time. At this point, it's kind of a toss up whether a "vacation" is going to be absolutely draining or actually refreshing, and this turned out to be one of the latter. Woohoo!

Many thanks to Uncle Ken and Aunt Molleen for passing on the time-share opportunity.