California Vacation: Day 1

...and we're off on our much-anticipated Spring Break vacation! We have been talking about it A LOT the past few months. The kids were giddy with excitement. Every day, leading up to yesterday, I had to explain how many days were left before the big date. Yesterday morning, they were all gathered in the hallway around 7:00 a.m., whispering that it was the "day of our trip." They all gave me big hugs filled with squeals when I confirmed that it was indeed.
We were very proud of our little travelers. They were perfect. I loved seeing them with their backpacks (carefully filled by Googie and me - thank you, Googie for your much-loved and necessary contributions!) charging through the airport. They wore their backpacks for over an hour before it was time to leave our house, even though I tried to tell them it wasn't time to go. Thank goodness Googie walked as far as she could go with us in the airport...it was a little overwhelming because we had a lot of STUFF (and lots of little people).
Dash's actual birth date falls during our trip (although we're not going to have his big party for several weeks). We thought it would be fun to let him open some of his presents in the airport while we were waiting on our flight to board. His gifts were all forms of entertainment for the plane. We got him his own Leapster with a few games (since he loves his brother's, and they always fight over it). These (used along with earphones) were very helpful during our long flight.
He also got a Spiderman aqua-doodle thing and 2 new dinosaur books.
When Sissy gets excited, she says, "I SO ES-ITED!" This was the first time she or Dash had ever flown. (Tornado had flown to NYC twice before, at ages 14 months and 4 years.) They were quiet, busy, cooperative, and thrilled about the entire experience. (And I had to keep a smile on MY face the entire time for their sake, despite the fact that flying FREAKS me out...I DON'T like it. I will do it, for the sake of adventure...but I don't like it.)

We arrived in L.A. at 9ish. Our big excitement at LAX was seeing "Millicent" (Lisa Goldstein) from One Tree Hill in the baggage area.

After taking the shuttle to pick up our car rental, we made a quick stop at Wal-Mart to stock up on drinks and cereal, plates, and bowls for breakfast the next morning. We like our hotel and are having a great time so far. I'll try to write about Day 2 tomorrow. Guess where we went?

I'll give you a hint: