Odenwalder Family Road Trip and Barfarama

What do you get when you caravan in two minivans with 15 people from Washington to California and one person gets sick?  You get the Odenwalder family road trip barfarama!  But wait I'm ahead of myself....

 

Wednesday night 1/14-Sean, Amy, Diana, Kirk, Heidi, Camille, Ellie and Claire set off for Washinton...they arrive sometime on Friday.

Saturday morning 1/17- Peter, Me, Connor, Chloe, Mary, Oliver and Calvin fly to Seattle.  Yes a 3 hour flight sounded much better than a 22 hour car ride.  We arrive at the Seattle airport and Peter realizes he never got an email from the car rental place.  Mary calls both car rental places in Tacoma and nobody has our reservation.  Peter insists he saw a confirmation number but didn't print it out.  Mary asks if they have a minivan available and they do...it'll cost $2000...Yikes!  That's a lot more than the $740 we thought we made the reservation for.  The guy on the other end of the line does some magic, puts in every discount possible and gets us down to $860, fine we'll take it.  Sean picks us all up at the airport and takes us to the car rental place.  Then we go to the house Sean and Amy were staying at and pick up the rest of Mary's kids.  Mary and her kids go to the hotel, while Sean, Amy and us go to a glass museum.  It was pouring cats and dogs and we left our umbrellas in the car...we got a bit wet.

 Blown glass-the lower one is on the ceiling of an outdoor bridge.

This is also in the glass museum.  

The guys found these cool light up letters and started playing with them.

Saturday evening we went back to the hotel.  Mary and I ran out for Chinese food and then we ate and went to sleep.

Sunday 1/18-Morning-We got up, got dressed and went down to the lobby for breakfast.  The hotel was clearly not well populated and the staff had put out minimal plates, napkins, bowls etc.   All over the place were signs telling you not to take food back to your room- $50-150 charge...seriously!  We were not fond of the place, and to make matters worse we tried to cancel our reservation for the following night and since we booked through hotels.com it was up to the hotel manager whether or not we could get refunded the money...it ended up being the most expensive hotel stay and clearly the lousiest!  Also Sunday morning Oliver threw up his bottle at 5am and 7am and more during breakfast...Later in the morning Sean and Amy came to get us and we all went to the Space Needle.  Mary and her crew went up, while the rest of us walked around the area.  It was very overcast and sprinkling so I didn't think it was worth the cost to go up and see fog, and neither did anybody else who decided to stay down as well.

 It was really chilly at the Space Needle

While waiting for the others we walked by these flowers that made music, they were interesting.

Once the others were done we hopped back in the cars and drove to Grandpa Calomeni's memorial (the reason we all went to Washington in the first place).  It was by far different than any other memorial service I've experienced and from what I've heard that's the way he would've liked it.  His favorite foods were prepared: bratwurst, sausages, pecan ice cream and beer.  Though most of us ate the cold cuts, chips, potato salad and root beer.  On a big screen in the middle of a room was the Seattle Sea Hawks game playing.  Off to the side was a slideshow of Grandpa's life...Our family was in one picture with Grandpa when we visited them when Connor was 8 months old.  Chloe never got to meet her great grandpa, but she'll hear plenty of stories about him when she's older-he was quite the character.  During halftime the game was muted and people shared stories and experiences.  When the game resumed people continued to socialize with one another and others left.  We decided to leave as the kids were having a hard time sitting still by that point.

From there we went to Pike's Place Market.  We were in front of the famous flying fish stand when the Sea Hawks scored a touchdown and the place erupted with cheering, yelling and dancing.  Chloe did not like this kind of wake up call.  While we were still there they also won the game and everyone cheered...it was a full blown party there.

Sunday night we caught a ferry over to Sequim where Grandpa and Sherry lived. We had a great time with Sherry. 

Monday 1/19- We set off from Sherry's house and drove to Olympic National Park visitor center.  Here they had a room for kids and it was awesome!  Then we went to the Hoh rainforest.  It was sprinkling, cold and very moist.  We went on the Hall of Mosses trail.

 What a cute little boy!

We loved looking at all the moss hanging from the trees.

 Some trees had these mushroom like things growing on the sides of them.

At night we went to a cabin on the beach.  After feeding dinner to the kids Calvin walked by me with his hands over his mouth and something obviously coming out.  I grabbed him and got him off the carpet and almost onto the kitchen floor when he puked...it was lovely.  He apparently puked several more times during the night and was found sleeping on the couch with his mom in the morning.

Tuesday 1/20- We walked along the beach of the cabin we stayed at and found this dead shark, a couple of sand dollars and some neat shells.

 We started to leave, but then someone had to go to the bathroom so we stopped at this cute little park and let the kids romp a little bit.

 Then we went to this fun maritime museum.  The kids had a great time here.

Chloe was really funny about this plexiglass part.  For the longest time she wouldn't walk out on it, and then when Ellie carried her out on it she quickly returned to solid looking ground.  I was excited to see her crawl out to see what Ellie was looking at.

 Calvin and Connor enjoyed talking on the phones.

 From there we then stopped at the Goonies house and took a picture.

 The jail in the movie was down the street so we stopped there too.

 The Flavel House

 We ended the night going to a fish and chips place and then to our guest house.  This was the sign out front...it was pretty cool.    Now remember Sunday how Oliver puked, then Calvin puked multiple times during the night Monday night....well now we're at Tuesday night and the great barfarama begins...Mary was feeling queasy at the restaurant and makes Peter stop the car twice so she can hurl on the side of the road.  She gets to the guest house and goes to bed, only to get up several times during the night to heave.  Most of the family stays up to watch Goonies that night and my family decides to go to bed.   At 1:30 Chloe pukes all over our bed.  Peter cleans her, while I clean the bed.  I then know there's one extra room left and pop my head in it to find Heidi asleep on top of several towels...yup she had puked too.  Great now what are we to do?  I cleaned up the mess the best I could but it was still all over the place, so we put the sheet over it and flip to the other side of the bed and have our feet down by the puke end.  This seems to work, we are just barely all settled back in and I hear the pitter patter of footsteps coming down the stairs, the bathroom door opens and then yep you guessed it, Ellie is vomiting.  Peter helps her, gives her a pot and she heads back upstairs to bed. 

Wednesday 1/21-Sometime in the morning Claire upchucks and then Sean who had been feeling queasy the night before makes a run for the bathroom.  Before breakfast 8 out of 15 in our crew had puked.

We pack up, clean up, tell the management that some of the children got the stomach flu and went on our way as fast as possible to the next hotel.  We were supposed to go to the Columbia River Gorge, but that would've been 3 hours out of our way and with more than half the crew sick we decided to skip it and get to the next hotel as fast as we could.  On our way out we stopped at a grocery store and bought pitchers, plastic bags (to make puke buckets for each car), gatorade and pedialite.

 The car I was in was feeling okay, at that point only Sean and Chloe had puked so they were still a bit under the weather but everyone else felt fine.  We stopped at this beach and let the kids romp around.  Chloe napped in the car and Sean didn't want to leave the car so he stayed with her.  Amy, Kirk, Heidi, Camille, Connor and I ran around.  The other car made several stops along the way to visit bathrooms...Diana had the sickness coming out the other end :(

 After we made it to the hotel we left the sick ones in bed and the rest of us, or those of us who were feeling better went out to look at some tide pools.  This is Alligator Rock.  The whole beach was made out of large rounded cobble stones.  It was quite difficult to walk in, but we saw some awesome tide pools.

We had fun touching sea anemones and watching them close up.

 Sea stars and urchins

 A panorama view of the tide pools.

Back at the hotel some of the kids felt better and joined the rest of us at the pool and spa for some water time.  Later that night Kirk joined the list of pukers.

Thursday 1/22-As all the sick ones heard of our adventures tide pooling and were seriously jealous, we went off in search of more tide pools to look at.  Sadly none were nearly as cool as what we saw, but they were still tide pools.

 Group photo

 Calvin and Connor were being nice to each other

 Seals/Sea Lions all over this rock

We went to Sea Lion Cave

We went down an elevator 200 feet to the Sea Lion Cave.

 A nice waterfall

 After the experience everyone got some popcorn for the car ride.  Chloe really liked the popcorn.

 Next we went and played at some sand dunes.  The kids had a great time climbing and running down the dunes.  Chloe made sand angels.

 Looking at more tide pools.

Thursday night we had two hotel rooms with three beds each.  Peter, Connor, Chloe and I got a king bedroom and it was connected to Sean and Amy's room of two queen beds.  In the middle of the night Connor became #11 to puke.

Friday 1/23- We drove to the Redwoods

 Connor by a fallen tree

 I wish I took this picture better...the girls are standing in between two trees that have toppled over.

 After this we tried to go see a glass beach, but the internet told us to go to a state park and it wasn't there.  We arrived just before sunset, barely before the park closed and were disappointed.  The ride there was eventful and nearly everyone got carsick.  Calvin got sick in the morning and threw up roughly 5 times in the car.  In the car I was in, Connor lost it twice.  The road was extremely twisty, we all nearly lost it.  When we got back in the car Connor and I shared the last motion sickness tablet and were much better the rest of the way to the hotel. 

 Saturday 1/24- We drove to Point Reyes...at the visitor center we took an earthquake trail.  During an earthquake in 1989 I think...the fence that Ellie is holding onto moved 16 feet.

 An inside view of the lighthouse

 The 308 steps we had to walk down to the lighthouse...and yes you guessed it the 308 steps we then had to climb up...oh it was awful!  I could've totally skipped this part of the trip, I don't think it was worth all those steps.

 We took a bus to the lighthouse and then another bus to sea these...they are elephant seals.  I zoomed my camera in the best I could, but we were really far away.  We got much closer to elephant seals when we went to Hearst Castle before we had Connor (like 10-20 feet away)...We told Amy this and now she's interested in going...perhaps we'll go again this summer.

After this our car load headed for home.  Diana, Mary and her kids headed to Sacramento which was only 3 hours away to visit Mary's parents. 

Sunday 1/25-Our car load arrived home at 2:30am...we were exhausted!...I'm glad we took a day to relax because we are still exhausted!

So there you have it the Odenwalder Road Trip and Barfarama where 11 out of 15 people got sick.  The lucky ones to avoid (so far) the plague: Me, Peter, Amy and Camille.

Christmas/USS Iowa Battleship

Christmas morning Connor was much more eager to go downstairs than last year (last year we had to talk him into checking out his loot).  This year he was the first one down stairs after me.  I thought I took pictures, but apparently not as this was the only one on my camera...oh well.  The kids fared pretty well.  Connor's stuff is on the left, then daddy's, mommy's and Chloe's is on the right.  The stockings that I didn't finish last year, I once again didn't finish this year.  I made sure I got the needlepoint part done for everyone and then couldn't figure out how to get the cuff on the stocking, so hence the names are all missing from them.  My mom told me she would help me this week, so next year they'll be ready :)

As for other gifts-Connor got a new Twenty Trucks shirt and the second DVD of Truck Tunes, Candyland, a cement mixer, a cherry picker truck, a memory game, books, apron, a dinosaur pillow pet, pajamas and a bucket of gears.  Chloe got an elephant ball popper, a vacuum, clothes, a shopping cart, pajamas, a frog and a doll.   Peter got some shirts, and a pajama shirt.  I got a foot massager and some jewelry.  Together we got a Roku, a gift card for dinner out and sonicare toothbrushes.

We did Christmas morning at our own house.  Then my parents, Josh and Bubba came over for breakfast and to see what we got.  We gave them their presents then as well.  After they left Chloe napped and the rest of us played with our goodies.  Later we went to Sean and Amy's house for dinner and present exchange with cousins.

On the 26th Abbie and Rafe came into town and we spent the day with them and E and P were also in town.  We had a great Christmas break!

Today we went to the USS Iowa Battleship in San Pedro.  David, Peter, Connor, Chloe and I enjoyed the battleship.  On the drive there Chloe puked in her car seat.  At one point Connor announces that it smells back there and then the fumes wafted up to the front seat....it was pretty bad.  We arrived and I changed Chloe while Peter cleaned out the seat.  Then we went in and enjoyed the battleship. 

Connor as Chief of Staff

We had a great time, Peter is already talking about going and seeing it again, he picked up several buy one get one free passes.  The weather held up pretty well for us.  It was a bit chilly, but it didn't rain while we were there, which was nice.  On our way home it rained pretty hard.  We stopped for lunch at Cafe Rio, one of Peter's favorite places (we still don't know why there are no locations near us).  Then we got back in the puke smelling car and drove home.  Once home I showered Chloe and then we took the car seat apart and threw it in the washing machine.  The shell needed to be hosed off, but since it was raining I put it out in the rain to get washed off.

Ugly Sweater/Graham Cracker Houses

Friday was my last day of work for two weeks.  That evening my work held their annual holiday work party and ornament exchange at Carvers.  This year they added in an ugly sweater contest and said there would be a prize for the ugliest sweater.  Many teachers set out to make an ugly sweater, some bought one, and some went with festive sweaters.  One of my co-workers suggested that I pin a bunch of my teddy bears to a sweater, and so I did.  While looking for the smallest bears in my collection, I realized most were Christmas bears, so I purposely pinned all of my small Christmas bears to one of my sweaters.  It was awesome!  I walked into Carvers and the people at the front all agreed mine was the best.  One guy walked us to our room and announced to everyone that the competition was over that I had won it.  Awhile later the same guy came back to pick the winner.  Each staff member had to stand and display their sweater.  If you wore a shirt and not a sweater, he disqualified you.  It came down to me and two others, one got disqualified because she took it off and didn't wear it the whole time.  Then it was down to me and the music teacher.  I liked his.  He found a Christmas vest at goodwill and glued silver tinsel around the edges and then spelled out Joy on the back in gold tinsel.  It was pretty awesome.  The guy wanted to call it a tie, but my boss said there was only one prize.....so then he decided that I was the favorite.  Woohoo!  I won bragging rights, a certificate and $50.

Saturday my mom and I went shopping.  I promptly spent my winnings and some more on Christmas gifts, but can say I pretty much started and nearly finished my shopping that day.  I ordered a few things online for the kids as well.  Saturday evening we had cousins over for our annual graham cracker house makings and a trip down Christmas Card Lane.  The festivities got underway a little late, we ate dinner, did Christmas Card Lane and then all the kids fell promptly to sleep.  We divided up the candy and everyone took home their houses undecorated. 

Today Connor and I decorated houses.  I decorated Chloe's and she had a great time eating it afterwards.  Connor decorated his own, let me take a picture and then plucked all the candies off and ate them.  Chloe basically ate the whole thing.

Tomorrow will likely consist of waiting for the garbage truck and making crafts.

School walk-a-thon/Beach day

The week before Thanksgiving week Connor participated in his school's walk-a-thon.  This year the theme was Trot for Turf.  We have tried countless times to grow grass on one of our playgrounds and it never lasts.  So we raised money for some artificial turf to go on one of our playgrounds as part of our soccer field.  Connor had a great time running his laps, and I snuck away from my class to watch him participate in his first walk-a-thon.  We had a great time. 

Every time he ran by me he had a giant grin on his face.  He was loving it!  

A couple days after the walk-a-thon, our school had our annual Thanksgiving Feast.  I was able to go to Connor's class and enjoy the feast next to him.  We had turkey, tater tots, apple sauce (made by Connor's class), carrots, cornbread muffins (made by the 4th and 5th graders) and a pumpkin bar dessert made by the 2nd and 3rd graders.  The feast was delicious and I loved getting to enjoy it with Connor.

Then we had a week off of school which we thoroughly enjoyed.  Connor loved waiting for the garbage truck on Tuesday and helped me clean the house for guests.  For Thanksgiving Peter cooked the bird and two pies.  He made pumpkin chiffon and apple cranberry pies.  He made an extra pumpkin chiffon and traded with Sean and Amy for a key lime pie.  We had dinner at my parents' house.  Abbie and Rafe were there and so were E and P.  Chloe showed off her walking skill/s to everyone.  She began taking steps unassisted about 2 weeks prior, but would often fall down and then resort to crawling.  This time she would fall and stand back up again.

On Friday my dad, Abbie, Rafe, Peter, Connor, Chloe and I headed to Del Mar Beach for some fun in the sun.  It's sad to say that we've taken Connor to the beach only a handful of times and live practically 20 minutes away.  Chloe had never been before and she loved the sand as much as Connor did, maybe more.

Who made this mess?  

Connor's reaction, "Chloe did it."

 She has chips in her mouth.

 Look at my new moves...I can walk now!

 Building castles together...or big muddy messes.

 Have no fear, she doesn't have black eyes...she's coated in sand .

Before getting into the car we stripped this little sand monster and gave her a new diaper.  Then after getting home everyone took a much needed shower.

Chloe has a knack for emptying out my purse...this time she found a brand new toothbrush.

Day off of work

On Tuesday we had a day off from school.  Connor "helped" me put away clean clothes by fork lifting my folded piles into the laundry basket thus unfolding them and creating more work for me.
All Connor wanted to do today was wait for the garbage trucks.  Everything else could wait, the garbage trucks were way more important than an outing to the park, running errands or going for a walk.  The first truck came around 10:30 or so, while waiting for it to turn around on the next street and come back up our street the second trash truck arrived and flipped around and so we saw it twice.  We kept waiting and waiting for the first truck to come back up our street and so yes all errands were put on hold.  Finally the truck came back up our street around 1:15, and then Connor fell asleep on two chairs at 1:30.  It's exhausting waiting for the garbage truck to arrive.
Chloe napped from 1-4, Connor napped from 1:30-2:30.  While waiting we played with playdoh, cleaned, made messes, organized the cupboards out of Chloe's reach and broke a few items while we cleaned.  Connor managed to break the dustpan, which has since made cleaning the floor a bit interesting.  And Chloe broke a corningware dish.  Chloe also rearranged the DVDs at least twice...which is a regular occurrence.  Chloe has also rearranged all of our plastic tupperware stuff, she found where I kept the muffin cup liners and played with just about all of them, she decorated the kitchen floor with bibs and then mommy finally put her in her highchair for snacks while she cleaned up each mess.  I fell asleep around 7pm exhausted on the couch, got up to go to bed and then slept soundly until my alarm went off at 6:30am.  Having the day off of work is so exhausting!

Class Field Trip

A couple weeks ago I got the opportunity to go with Connor on his class field trip to the pumpkin patch.  Pretty much every child had a parent with them.  The kids had a blast.  They went on a wagon ride, ran through the corn maze, posed for a couple of pictures, picked out a pumpkin, had a snack and went back to school in time for sharing time and morning recess.  They had a great time.

It's tough getting 20 kids to all look the same way.

Here's the pumpkin we took home.  We anxiously await carving it in a couple days.

Here's a few cute pictures of the kiddos.

Chloe is 14 months old and on the verge of walking.  She'll stand up to anything, or really nothing at all.  She also enjoys pushing objects around the house.

This past Saturday was our work fall festival (Halloween Carnival).  Chloe loved this booth the best and wanted to stay there the whole time.  When we pulled her away she reached and lunged her way back towards the water table until daddy decided to go back.  Connor and I wandered to a few more booths.  We all had a great time.

Oktoberfest/Sea World

About two weeks ago we went to the El Cajon Oktoberfest.  They fly in a band from Germany and their Oktoberfest lasts for two weekends.  The kids had a great time dancing with daddy.

Connor and Chloe loved posing for a picture.

Mommy and Daddy tried it out too.

We had a great time and came home with several yummy desserts.

Then on Saturday we went to Sea World for their Halloween Spooktacular.  You could come dressed up for Halloween and trick or treat around the park at specially designed candy booths scattered throughout the park.  Connor went as a garbage man with a hard hat.  The hat was too big, but while cruising around in the stroller, he proudly wore it.  Connor's only wish for the day was to go on the flying elmos, spinning jellyfish and some rocking thing.  He had a great time!  Our passes expired two days later, so we were glad to get in one more fun trip to Sea World.  I think we'll get year passes again in two years.  Or perhaps sooner, Connor really had a great time going.

We came home with exhausted, sugared kids who had a great time.  We still have some of the candy left over too.

This house is full of surprises!

So today we had a company start digging up the concrete in our backyard.  We realized that the spa that used to be in our backyard was filled in with cinder blocks and then concrete was poured over the top....ugh what a mess!

Peter and my dad took down the gazebo Tuesday and Wednesday night.

 After they took out all the nuts/bolts/nails, they tried to push it over and it fell straight through the posts.

 Above is what is left of the shack that was knocked down several weeks ago.  Now it holds all the gazebo pieces.  The bobcat loader took down part of the walls in order to get into our backyard.  Less work for us to do later on.

 Here's the area that was broken up today.  More work will take place tomorrow.

 Connor and I missed all the fun, so we took a picture next to the bobcat.  He'll likely skip school tomorrow to watch all the action since daddy has the day off of work.

1 Year Photo Shoot

Aunt Amy took these adorable photos of our One Year Old!