Journey to Juneau: las vegas, thanksgiving, black friday, ,etc...

Well, we haven't posted in a while, mostly because we have been running around like crazy folks. Last wednesday night, my friend Tracy (who deserves to be made Saint Tracy after her heroics last weekend) helped me bring the girls to Vegas. It was insane. Fortunately, it wasn't as insane as it could have been, but it was still quite an undertaking. Tracy does not yet have children, and it was quite amazing that she was so awesome with helping me haul mine through a 5 hour plane ride, a four hour layover, and another 1 hour plane ride, and then repeat the whole process 4 days later. Fortunately, both Juneau and Nova have already made a couple of very long plane rides, so they are becoming rather seasoned travelers at the ripe old age of 6.5 and 14 months. This was Nova's 3rd trans-pacific flight, and she did quite well.

I only really got the Bad Mother Award once, when Juneau fell off the airport chair she was balancing precariously on, and busted her bottom lip. there were many tears, and lots of gushing of blood, and quite a few nasty stares from bystanders who couldn't believe i would let my daughter stand unassisted on the airport chair with metal arms. With several minutes of heavy pressure on the wound (once i finally identified it through the massive hemorrhage), the bleeding and tears resolved, and we made it through the rest of the trip.

Vegas itself was a BLAST. Tracy, our friend Kenya, and I had a great time learning lots of cool stuff at the Cosmetic Gynecology conference, and Juneau and Nova had a fantastic time getting non-stop spoiling by Grandpa and Grandma Saccenti, Aunt Becky, and Uncle Drew. The girls absolutely LOVED the lights of the casinos. I unfortunately do not have any pictures...which is rather sad, but truthfully i had such a difficult time keep up with myself and the girls, that i couldn't even think about taking the extra step of pulling out the camera. Travel with babies is hard! I thought travel with 1 baby was hard when Nova and I were traversing between Hawaii and Michigan, but adding J-bug to the equation kind of quadrupled the work/stress. But all that being said, it was DEFINATELY worth it so Juneau and Nova could hang out with the family. Grandpa and Grandma adored the girls, and the girls adored them, so it was overall a success. Not to mention that the good Lord smiled down on us, and Tracy and I each had an empty seat (on otherwise totally full flights) next to us on 3 of the 4 flights. That was truly a miracle, and a life-saver.

The girls' first Thanksgiving was action packed. We started off with the Tripler Crew thanksgiving, then headed over to the Traditional Thanksgiving Feast at Gordon Biersch with cousins Tim, Beth, and Melody, and then over for a final thanksgiving evening with the University of Hawaii Kinesiology gang. Needless to say, i think we are truly thanksgivinged-out until next November. The girls were amazing as we dragged them around all over the island. I'm glad that they have very easy going personalities, and just go with the flow.

Finally, we didn't do our usual wake up at 4 am for the black friday deals this year. There wasn't really anything we "needed" from the ads, so we slept in until 6:30 when the bug woke us up. I was getting a little stir crazy from being in the house all day, so in the afternoon we headed out for a little shopping. By the time we hit the stores they crazy crowds had kind of dissolved, and we just bought a few little things.

I have to say i am pretty pumped about my christmas present (which cris bought after just a tiny bit of begging a couple of weeks ago). On December 25th i will be the ecstatic owner of my very own Nintendo Wii. I'm super excited. The last game system i owned was the olllld original Nintendo (circa 1985). Cris owned an original Playstation system, but never bought anything since then. we can't wait to try out the amazing new technology that has come about in the last 20 years.

and finally, pictures of the week (except for vegas, for the above stated reasons!)