I have no idea how many parts this will be, but I think if I don't start writing things down now I'll never get around to it.
James is Mark's next-older brother. I first met him shortly after Mark and I started dating, and the first thing I thought about him was that I thought he was super-cute. He's the random skinny blond-haired, blue-eyed kid in the family. He hardly looks like his siblings, but he looks EXACTLY like his parents. It's kind of like how my sister, Marissa, and I don't look very much alike (until we smile together) because we've inherited opposite traits from our parents. :)
James is really smart and speaks about a bajillion languages (okay, maybe it's just Portuguese, Arabic, and Spanish, but it SEEMS like a lot), plays the guitar and had his own band in high school and used his college money to make a CD, currently works for the foreign service and is going to Baghdad with his wife in September, travels like crazy, and writes poetry.
Last February, I met Shauri when we visited James in Matamoros. She happened to be going to Mexico city and had a layover of sorts in Brownsville/Matamoros. I don't exactly know how to describe this, but ... she's sort of the person I imagined myself becoming. She served a Spanish-speaking mission in Anaheim and somehow managed to graduate from school without getting married and landed herself an awesome job that lets her travel ALL OVER THE PLACE.
Instead of graduating and traveling the world, I got married my freshman year and had my first kid shortly after graduating (or, at least, when I *should've* graduated if they hadn't cancelled all of my finance electives TWICE.) Often times, life doesn't turn out how you envisioned it.
Anyway. Shauri was amazing and awesome and slightly intimidating to me because I barely knew her and already idolized her. James talked to Mark once and was like, "Should I pursue it?" and Mark was like HECK YES DO IT MAN. Now I'm thrilled to have one of my idols in the family. Don't let her know. ;) I guess I'm also a little sad because now I KNOW I'm not the coolest daughter-in-law anymore. ;) ;) ;)
Okay. So James lived in Matamoros, then went to Washington, DC to study more Arabic before going off to Baghdad. Shauri lives in Ann Arbor, MI, in James' sister's ward. She gets to travel all over the place because she kind of does video PR stuff for companies. It sounds like most of her family lives in Ann Arbor, too. So, of course, between James' family living on the west coast, Shauri's family living in Michigan, and James living in Washington DC, Shauri opts to get married in ... Rhode Island. Makes perfect sense, no?
Mark's family goes to the Oregon coast every summer. Larry (Mark's dad) has gone in on a house with some of his siblings, so we all stay at the "coast house" every summer. Apparently, Shauri's family went to Rhode Island a lot when she was younger because her grandpa grew up there. Or something. So it's a gorgeous place and would be an AWESOME cool place to have a wedding. They went all out and out of their way to make the wedding an awesome experience for all of us. It was like a destination wedding ... a nice change from your stereotypical Mormon wedding.
*whistles innocently and looks away* Who, me?
Awesome fact #1: Kids under 2 fly free, and Carmen turned 2 the Wednesday after we returned from Rhode Island. Thank you, James and Shauri, for choosing the first weekend in May so we could save $400+ on airline tickets. ;)
I was a little nervous about the toddler-on-a-plane thing, but Carmen and I have traveled together a LOT. We've driven to Seattle several times and Mom's purchased plane tickets for us so we can visit her. Plus, this time, we had Mark with us so hopefully the two of us would be able to entertain her enough on the flight.
Our flight to Rhode Island had two parts - first a short flight to Phoenix, then a long flight the rest of the way. Our first flight was pretty empty, so we actually had a whole row of 3 seats to ourselves. Carmen did a *fabulous* job entertaining herself and charmed the pants off everyone in the plane. It's fun to have people compliment your kid after you land. "Awww, you're such a cute little girl, you were so good on the plane!" to which Carmen nonchalantly goes, "Yeah." and elicits more coos from people. Hahahahahahaha.
Our second flight was completely full, and we were lucky to sit next to a woman who said, "I remember what it's like to fly with a toddler." and, "You can sit by me as long as you bring her with you!" and would occasionally ask us if we needed to get up and walk around or go to the bathroom. Carmen fell asleep on Mark's chest for a while and it was a lovely 6-hour flight.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
My parents tried matching their arrival time to ours, since we rented a car together. We got off the plane and saw them standing next to the gate entrance, and for a while it felt like we were in some kind of pre-9/11 time warp.
Don't you miss being able to see your loved ones right at the gate?
Things went smoothly with retrieving our luggage and finding the car rental place, even though the car rental place was like ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE AIRPORT. We took a bajillion moving platforms across the airport and finally made it. Dad was smart enough to grab us one of those Smart Cartes, because otherwise ... there's no way we could've figured out how to get our luggage out. Whoever invented the wheel was a genius.
Random side note: There was a guy with two kids who was also going to the car rental place, and he was wearing his kid's little backpack that was shaped like a Storm Trooper head. I wanted to tell him "Happy Star Wars Day" (it was May 4th) but he looked kind of cranky and I didn't want to annoy him.
ANYWHO. All of our luggage fit perfectly (and barely!) into the back of the SUV we rented and I wanted to be a good person and return the Smart Carte. Dad wanted to leave it in the parking lot and let the airport people take care of it. I took it back inside and got a lucky quarter from the cart return (hooray!) and on my way out, I passed by a lady who was on our flight. She stopped me to tell me she thought my daughter was an absolute doll and I thanked her.
Seriously, it felt so good. It was a nice vacation. I'm so happy.
I think it makes a big difference when we leave on time, get there on time, and get enough sleep. The beginning of a vacation is the easiest part. :D
We managed to find our hotel and got in touch with Mark's parents (who were staying in Boston that night because they wanted to revisit their old stomping grounds at Harvard) for what we would be doing on Thursday. More about that next time, in Part II!!
No comments:
Post a Comment