California Love

We arrived in California on Saturday morning. Everything has been amazing!

 Our very own Aunt Edna: As I frequently do, I feel the need to make yet another Vacation reference. We have started calling Bailey Edna in the car due to her unique little set up in the backseat.  She has her sunglasses on under this as well and is watching a movie with her headphones on. She says its so she is in a movie theatre. We have a strange kid. 

We headed out onto the road Thursday night and made it about an hour from Colorado before stopping  for a couple of hours at a rest stop.  Throughout Iowa and Nebraska Bailey was so interested in all the water towers, windmills and even the power lines.  After sleeping in the backseat of the Passat with all of our luggage and a 6 year old, I have found another reason to appreciate this 5 feet tall height of mine.  I think I was a bit more comfortable than Brent.

So after about a 4 hour stop, it was back on the road.  We agreed on doing 5 hour driving stretches but decided to have Brent tackle the mountains of Denver.  That left the beautiful yet very boring stretch of Utah for me.  For those of you who may not know,  Brent has a pretty intense fear of heights (similar im magnitude to my fear of snakes but I will mention that later).  This fear gets really bad back home driving in Duluth Even so you can imagine how fun it was driving though Utah with althe canyons.

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 This is from a rest stop in Utah.  If you notice it is taken of Brent and Bailey walking down a path in the desert from in side the car.  As a person who has panic attacks walking into a pet store for fear of running into a display of snakes, taking a stroller through rattle snake habitats didnt seem to be safe or something I wanted any part of.

We made it as far as Vegas that night.  We hadn't planned on staying there on a Friday night so not only got to experience Vegas quite differently by having a 6 years old with and staying as Bailey put it "in a junk hotel".  Maybe the fact that as we pulled up there were guys sitting on the trrunk of a car drinking 40's without shirts on was a sign to her that this wad not the Bellagio.  All was well and we explored a little that morning before heading to Anaheim.

Well this tablet is starting to think it can write this blog much better than I can I will end there and go get dressed for Disneyland.  I

From our weird family,

Disneyland Here We Come....

Bailey's first road trip to the Black Hills!

Well we are down to just a couple of days before we head out on the Tilley Family Road Trip.  Yesterday was spent deciding on very important things like what types of snacks we need to have with and just how many swim suits Bailey will need to pack (and for any of you that remember Cabo, you know this is a dilemma for Brent, who seemed to have over 10 pairs of swim trunks packed on that trip). This amazing weather has helped but we needed to explain to Bailey that the weather right now in California is not quite as warm as it is here.  I think that will all be forgotten quickly once she learns of the big surprise.

The clues have been going well but there are only so many clues you can give after she has figured out some of the places.  We did love the fact that she asked if we could text Mike Hoeffel and ask if we could come to one of his games because that would be a super fun thing to do on vacation.  That required taking out a map and showing her that New Jersey wasn’t very close to California.  A text to Mike saying hello will have to do for now.

There is a song called It’s Gonna Be a Good Life that is one of Disney’s theme songs on commercials.  Bailey knows this and LOVES the song.  When the song came on yesterday she told us that she was going to listen to the song a lot on the trip because the entire trip will be a Good Life.  If she only knew how fitting the song was….

We have decided exactly how we will let her know that this is a trip to Disneyland.  One of Bailey’s favorite Disney movies is Alice in Wonderland.  We are going to be wrapping up an “Un-Birthday” present to give her when we get to Denver.  She loves the idea that in Wonderland, you get 364 Un-Birthdays so she will be pretty excited when she opens the package to find a new Alice in Wonderland t-shirt and the sticker for the car window that says “We are going to Disneyland!”  I just hope we are able to catch her reaction on video this time.  Last time was super emotional with how excited she got so I hope this is just as exciting to her.

The ipods have been loaded up with movies for her, the DS and video games are packed and now that she is reading, she even has a couple of chapter books packed.  I am sure about 2 hours into the car ride we will hear those dreaded “how much longer” words but we are all so excited I don’t think it will bother us much (well maybe after two days in the car it will but right now I am going with, it won’t bother us). Oh and we made sure to check to make sure Disneyland isn't closed for two weeks for repairs so Brent does not need to go Clark Griswold on them.

With all that we have to get ready I am sure I won’t post again until we are on the road but we plan on posting along the way.  I will definitely let everyone know how the Disneyland surprise turns out.

How do you say Justice in Spanish?

So over the past few months, we have realized that we have a 6 yr old who is going on about 15.  The drama with clothes really started a few months back.  Bailey takes after me and is a bit small for her age.  With the fact that she is able to fit into size 4 and 5 shirts had to come the realization that what may be printed on a shirt for a 4 yr old does not necessarily = cool for a 6 yr old.  After much discussion as to why her clothes were not good enough, we ventured into what has since become her favorite store, Justice.

Now I agree, these clothes are absolutly adorable but what I struggle with is the fact that a shirt in this store costs on average $34.   It is because of this that we hit some good sales and got her a bunch of stuff but it probably isn't as much as she would hope.  Our funny Bailey story for the day relates back to this and the creative way Brent solved it, for now.  We were folding laundry a few weeks back and Bailey was looking at tags for her clothes asking Brent where they were from.  She came across a cute shirt that she really liked and then examined the tag,  "oh, it doesn't say Justice".  Brent thought quickly and responded, "yes it does.  That is how you say Justice in Spanish".

Just the other day while putting some clothes away, she pulled out the same shirt and said, "oh I love this one so much, especially because it is the Spanish Justice shirt."  Yep, Faded Glory is how you spell Justice in Spanish.  Now we may have to translate Old Navy to French, Jumping Beans to Russian and Gap to Chinese and she will have the biggest Justice clothing collection ever.

Vacation update:  She has gotten a few of the larger clues.  She will be taking a surfing lesson while we are in San Diego so she is very excited about that.  However, she is pretty sure that that will take place in Chicago.  Yeah the surfing is great there.  Another large clue we gave her was that she likes to sing and dance to a song about this place (Viva Las Vegas).  It took a few guess of Viva Chicago and Viva Mexico to remember that Las Vegas is probably a stop on our trip.  Again, she has looked at a map and insists that Chicago is not out of the ream of possibilities.

Because she is a hockey lover I figured the clue "you will be close to where Ducks play hockey" would at least get her to a city.  Well again, it was the "Chicago Ducks, no I mean the St. Louis Ducks".  Wow, I thought I taught you better than that Bails!  (This summer Cade will have to explain to her all about the St. Louis BLUES.) 

Stack it Up

Bailey has found yet another way to use her super competitive side.  She has fallen in love with Cup Stacking.  I first saw Cup Stacking when I worked at the U of MN and one of our students, Emmy,  held the world record.  We would try to convince her any chance we got to show us how crazy fast she could actually stack these plastic cups.  Well, Cup Stacking is now part of the curriculum at Bailey's school to work on hand/eye coordination in gym class (where were things like this when I was in school????  I definitely would have been much better at something like this than Basketball or anything else where a ball was flying at my face)

I emailed Emmy and yesterday a package of autographed cups, timer and a speed mat arrived at our door.  Needless to say, Bailey was SOOOOOO  excited.  She was a bit confused when Brent was able to tie her score on the first try but she told me she is just warming up and will be able to go much faster.

As for our trip, Bailey has gotten a few more clues.  Here are her guesses:
Clue: There is snow here even when it is summertime 

Her guess: the desert?????   (we really need to bump up that weather/climate/geography lesson because we were looking for the answer of the mountains) Clue: You will see a light show above your head Her Guess/Question: "So will this light show be happening the whole time?  Like when I am in the car I can look up and see a light show?  I think that sounds like something that happens in Mexico". Yes Bailey, if you take the right kind of things in Mexico I am sure a light show will appear any time you look up.   The right guess on that one was the Fremont Street Experience in Vegas with all the light and laser shows downtown. She has made one request, she said since we will be driving that we should probably stop at any garage sales we see or any Storage Wars to see if we can find either some treasures or Justice clothes.  Yep that is my kid!!!!!

The Start of Bailey's Adventures

Since I have started blogging for work, I have realized that it is a great way to be able to share some of the adventures that we have and a great outlet for some of the funny Bailey stories that we have. 

As some of you know, we have decided to embark on our first family road trip longer than the Black Hills.  We are surprising Bailey with a trip to Disneyland.  I enjoyed our long family roadtrip vacations and I am hoping that Brent and Bailey feel the same way.  I can honestly say that at the time we took the trips I often wondered why we couldn't fly there but as I have gotten older I love being able to share stories with my family about the adventures we had.  I will never forget Dusty getting upset that my dad got pulled over for speeding or that Brian and Deb had rented a Chevy Lumina van that reminded us of a space vehicle.  We also remember how much has changed in terms of child safety seats when we remember back to the winter trip to Disney World.  Angee, Dusty and I were perfectly secure in our bean bag chairs in the back of the truck.  Who needed heat when you had lots of blankets in the topper?  

While our trip to Disney World was amazing last year and we hope to do the all inclusive trip to Florida again soon, at the end of March we are starting our driving adventure.  Because I tend to get excited about these kinds of things, I made up a list of over 60 clues that we are giving to Bailey each night.  She then is guessing at where we might be heading.  The clues so far have ranged from: we will be high in the sky but not in a plane but in our car.  The guess she made on that one:  she was pretty concerned that a giant crane was going to pick our car up.  My favorite guess had to be when Brent gave her the clues of: It starts with B and smells like salt.  She went off to bed only to come almost stomping into our room in the morning telling us she figured it out and that we would be spending our Spring Break having breakfast at Denny's.  Breakfast started with a B and it smells like salt from all the food.  Not quite the saltwater, beach image Brent had but it made us laugh. 

During our trip I hope to be able to post pictures along our way.  We watched Vacation over the weekend and Bailey has requested that on our trip that we don't take any old people along because she does not want them to die and have to ride on the roof.  That was her favorite part of the movie, along with Clark falling asleep at the wheel.

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