Hey all!  We made it back to hot Los Angeles!  Overall we had a really good trip visiting family in 3 different states.  Man, we are ambitious on vacation – now we need an actual vacation to recover.

Day one.  Oh, day one.  Boy do I have a story for you!  But I’ll start at the beginning.  Most of the day was spent traveling from LAX to O’Hare.  Stevie did pretty well on the flight, but 4+ hours is a long time for any kid to sit still, so he was pretty restless.  Especially the second half – lots of whining and testing the boundaries.  But as soon as the plane landed… well, he fell asleep.  Haha.  So we just waited as long as possible to exit.

And here’s where it gets interesting…

At the car rental place, we were looking over our reservation information for our next flight from O’Hare to Kansas City and couldn’t find the departure date.  It wasn’t making any sense.  But as I read the email closer, I realized I had booked the flight for FEBRUARY instead of MARCH.  Our flight was a month ago.  We missed it.  I totally bought tickets for the wrong day.  Ooooh my gosh.  Idiot.  So we lost the money for that flight and had to book a new one, leaving in a couple days.  Paul was a lot calmer than I was, he just swore I’d never live it down.

So with a little bump in the road, we made our way to the Kinzie Hotel.  But the story doesn’t end there…

Kinzie is right in downtown, a really cool boutique hotel near the river.  I was so excited to stay there.  We waited at the check-in desk for awhile as the clerk looked up our reservation info.  He checked both our names, phone numbers, and still couldn’t find it.  We double checked our email and yep – sure enough – I had also booked the hotel for February.  WTF!  Seriously!??  So we lost our deposit on the hotel too.  AND they were sold out all weekend.  We had to find a new place to stay.

O.  M.  G.

I felt my cheeks go directly up in flames, and that sinking feeling directly down to my tummy.  How could I do that?  I mean, mommy brain and blonde moments are one thing, but this was just too dumb.

Hooray for the trusty Marriott across the street!  They had rooms available, it was nice and clean with a great view and free breakfast.  Thank. Goodness.  I still feel so lucky that it worked out and we didn’t have to stay somewhere scary or crazy expensive. PHEW.

Once we finally got settled in, we headed right back out to meet up with cousins and eat deep dish pizza. There is seriously nothing like a good Chicago deep dish.  It almost made me feel entirely better about my stupid brain!

Almost.

Girl…. BYE!!!

–— Stevie HATED wearing a hat and gloves. A lot. — — Once he got outside, he forgot about it —