First Family Vacation

The past month and a half has been very busy for our family.  We took our first vacation as a family...then we celebrated Doug's birthday, my birthday and our 7 year anniversary!  I've been meaning to write down some of our favorite memories from our vacation.  I'm a little late on it, but better late than never!! :)

Doug's brother, Mark, moved to Pahrump, NV for a teaching position at the end of December.  We were all missing him, and decided to head out that way for our vacation.  Pahrump is about 50 miles away from Las Vegas, and about 40 miles away from Death Valley in CA.  With me being a stay at home mom, and Doug working for his parents, we were able to take a nice, long trip. 

Our plane left at 11:30 a.m. on Thursday, March 10.  I was nervous to take Cody on the plane.  I'm a nervous flyer anyway, so add a baby to the mix, and I was incredibly scared!  I was going into it preparing for the worst, but hoping for the best.  Well, our little champ did amazing on both flights!!  I fed him both times as we were taking off, and made sure he had his paci in (and was actually sucking on it) when we landed.  He literally slept the whole time both times.  I was so proud of him!

Once we landed in Vegas and got all our luggage, we headed to get our rental car.  Doug went to stand in line, while Cody and I found a quiet little couch so I could feed him.  At this point, I had never nursed in public before, let alone a busy airport.  But, we got lucky and there weren't a lot of people around us...at first.  I wasn't scared about possibly exposing myself...I mean, I was doing the most natural thing in the world that a mom can do for her child.  The thing I was afraid of was getting disapproving looks.  But, Cody had to eat, and I had no formula to make a bottle.  He did great, and I'm giving myself a pat on the back here, because I did great too!  Not too long after our nursing session started, a basketball team of High School girls and their coaches came and sat in the area I was.  None of them even gave us a second glance, except their coach who was sitting next to me, and she just smiled a 'knowing' smile at me.  It made me feel great!  I got through my first public nursing and I got through it with minimal exposure. ;)

ONce we finally got the keys to the car, we had to go pick up our carseat rental.  Now, this is something that I struggled about.  I didn't want to take my nice Chicco carseat with us for two reasons.  I didn't want it to get damaged in any way...and Doug didn't want to haul it around in the airport.  I wanted to purchase just a cheap carseat to check with our luggage, but Doug wasn't on board with that idea either.  I had read bad things about rental carseats, and I didn't want to go that route, but that was our only other option.  Well, it wasn't an infant seat, it was a convertable seat.  Which, the weight limit was fine, I would have just been more comfortable putting my almost 6 month old in a bucket type seat.  The seat wasn't dirty, which was a relief...but it wasn't comfortable for Cody.  We had to stuff blankets in it and around him, but we made it work.

We were finally ready to get our vacation started!  We wanted to do lots of sight seeing, but also wanted to spend time just relaxing with Mark.  We rested for a couple of days and then on Sunday, March 13, we headed off on a 3 hour drive to see the Grand Canyon.  I can honestly say that it is one of the most amazing sights I have ever seen.  Words really can't describe it, and pictures don't do it justice.  I highly recommend that everyone see it at some point in their life!

Since that was a long day for us, we rested on Monday, and headed off to Death Valley on Tuesday.  I think at one point we were 131 ft. below sea level.  We got to go to one really cool look-out and see salt flats all below...about as far as you could see.  It was beautiful!  Doug & I were up there for quite a while just taking it all in. 

Wednesday we headed to Hoover Dam.  It was busy, and we decided not to take a tour, but we did walk across it, and get some pictures.  On our way back to Mark's, we made a quick stop at the Hooters Casino in Vegas to get Doug a shirt (he collects them and gets one on most of our vacations) and I wanted to get Code a Hooters onesie...yep, we're classy like that! ;)  Thursday was our last day, and we had planned to stay home and rest since we had to leave Mark's at 3 a.m. to get to Vegas.  Well, everything so far had gone great, so I'm not really surprised that I got REALLY sick Wednesday night, and was stuck lying around all day not able to get up for fear of getting sick.  I needed to pack, and get things prepared for Cody for the flight.  Thankfully, I have an amazing husband that helped, and had family praying for me to get better before our flight.  I did start feeling better just in time, and I was able to sleep most of the flight back.

We had such an amazing trip!  I have tons of pictures, and we have some great memories.  Now, I'm looking forward to our next trip... :)

(Pictures to come)