California: getting there

With air travel, it's not a matter of if something will go wrong, but when.

Our 6 p.m. flight out of Raleigh was delayed and we didn't leave until 9 p.m.

Flying with kids is probably my least favorite thing to do as a parent. Oliver and the girls are easy. They're old enough to be entertained by electronics and books but Simon is not. How do you entertain a 15-month-old in one tiny spot for 6 hours? You hope and pray they fall asleep.

We brought Simon's car seat on the plane and I'm so glad we did. Simon didn't actually have a seat so the car seat was technically for Oliver. As I suspected, Simon was super squirmy and there was no way he would fall asleep on our laps. So we stuck him in the car seat and he immediately turned his head and went to sleep. And we had Oliver sleep on our lap. Both boys slept through most of the flight to San Francisco. Simon had come down with a cold the day before we left which actually mellowed him out a bit. We were worried about this ear-piercing scream he does when he wants something (strangers often compare him to a pterodactyl) but he mostly kept his complaining to a sad whimper.

We finally arrived in San Francisco at midnight (3 a.m. Eastern time) and of course we had missed our connection to L.A. so we had to pay for a hotel. A hotel room which we used for 3 hours. We finally arrived in the room at 1 a.m. (4 a.m. Eastern) and had to painfully wake the kids up at 4 a.m. for our early flight to L.A. At least this time all of our luggage and car seats made it!

The rental car company did not have the minivan we reserved (of course) so they "upgraded" us to a Suburban. Super fun to drive around in big cities where parking is limited and even more fun to fill with gas at California prices. It was such a pain to load the kids in and out of it (I just can't get over the convenience of automatic sliding doors with kids) but they did love the dual DVD screens and we had plenty of cargo space.

After picking up our rental, we drove straight to Disneyland! Are we crazy? Maybe. (More on that later.)

But we survived and it could have been worse and the kids did really great on the flights. (Well, Simon and Oliver both screamed their heads off on the descent into L.A. but we later learned Oliver had an ear infection. Poor kid.)

Burning through all the airplane snacks while we wait for our flight in Raleigh.

Oliver at 4 a.m.