Rewind!

I realized that I never really blogged about our week in Indiana. I took very few photos when I was there, and then when I got home, I realized that my camera was set to super low quality, so all the photos I did take turned out horrible!

Needless to say, when we were there, my mind wasn't on taking photos at all. We arrived on Saturday night, and I spent every day over at my Grandma's house. I got sick from the plane (very sick), and then passed on my cold to Ginger (who also got very sick).

My Grandpa's funeral was last Wednesday, and I was so sick for it, I almost couldn't go (but of course I went)! I spent a lot of time visiting my mom's side of the family when I was in Indy, but of course, we were all sad and grieving over my Grandpa. I also got together with my dad and his side of the family a few times. That was wonderful, too. We talked a lot about Steven, and that was very healing. On top of that, my step-dad, Eric, started chemo/radiation for his cancer this past Monday (stage 4 colon cancer)...so that was on everyone's mind, as well.

What can I say, when it rains, it pours!

But, even though the visit was very sad and hard in many ways, we did find ways to make silver linings on the rain clouds overhead.

I got to take lots of long drives during Ginger's naptime (she had a way of only falling asleep for a nap in the car, so I just went with it). I got to admire the gorgeous Indiana Fall Foilage, something we don't really see in California!



Despite the fact that it was really hard to fly 2000 miles by myself with a 1 year old and a 4 year old, we ended up having a lot of fun on the plane.



Ginger of course wanted to make sure Boo (Paprika's doll) stayed hydrated! In general, Ginger and Paprika were both wonderful...except when Ginger decided to jump up and down on top of the tray tables during our first flight from LA to Houston. Oops!


And Paprika wanted to play hide and seek underneath the airplane seats!



By the time we were headed home, they were both old pros at flying. Ginger enjoyed the in-flight entertainment, and Paprika read the SkyMall catalog for about 5 hours. She was making up stories about all the products in SkyMall. Who knew it could be so entertaining?!



We spent a lot of time with my dad, who acted as our nanny for the week! He and his wife, Nancy, really stepped up to the plate and helped us out a lot!



I also got to visit with Ann three times - two nights out for dinner just us - and one night with all the kids together. Paprika calls Ann's kids "her cousins" - and they had a magical night playing together!





In between visiting with family, we spent a lot of time improvising...with all of our toys back in California, we had to make do. And if there is anything Paprika knows how to do, it is improvise and make do! Her favorite thing to do was to load Ginger into "the wagon" (the cooler we found in my Aunt Jane's garage) and fill it up with "snacks" for all of Paprika's dollies. Don't worry, the beer cans stayed closed! Ginger really enjoyed riding along!