From somewhere in Ca...

Actually, I'm in Sacramento now, after visiting Santa Barbara for 2 weeks.
So far, this trip has been great. I was able to spend a lot of time with my dad's family and had a really fun time. My sister Tracey graduated from high school on the 15th. Emma, Sarah & I went to the beach, and Emma had a blast running around in the water & playing with anyone who was around. We went shopping, always fun. It was nice to just relax & be with family. I think I really realize now how much I miss CA. I don't miss the outrageous prices on everything from gas to houses, but I miss being able to just take a short (or long) drive and see anyone in our family. I think this has really solidified our resolve to make it back here as soon as we can.
Emma was so funny with my two brothers. She seemed to have problems remember their names individually so she kinda merged their 2 names together. Their names are Kyle & Evan, so she called them both "Kevin". She also periodiclaly called them "the big boy" & "the little boy". She had a little difficulty with the concept of great-grandparents, so she just called them Grandpa & Grandma. But then when my dad came into the picture, she kept calling him "Daddy's mommy". In our attempt to help her understand, we had told her that he was "mommy's daddy" but she kinda mixed that up.
Sarah started smiling a little while we were there. She's not doing it very often, but it's still a big milestone. They both have done really well on the trip. Our flight to CA was fun, in the least likable meaning of the word. We missed our 1st flight in the morning (to be truly accurate, the people at the aiport were Nazis about security & took WAY too long to check everyone's bag, thus making me miss my plane). So we had to catch the next flight, which didn't leave for 6 hours. I felt like Tom Hanks' character in "The Terminal". We were stuck there. We had checked Emma's carseat, so we couldn't just leave, but we couldn't stand staying in an airport for 6 hours. So I drove to Targe, bought a cheap booster seat, and then picked up Jeff & the girls and we went back to the mall for a couple hours. Our original flight had us going to Minneapolis with a 3 hour layover. This flight we ended up taking took us to Detroit (which is only a 30 minute flight from where we took off), with an hour layover, but we ended up sitting on the tarmack, in the plane, for 1 hour 45 minutes. Apparently there was a storm going over & we couldn't take off. It could have turned out a lot uglier than it did, with two kids in a plane that isn't making any progress. But Sarah nursed most of the time, and surprisingly, Emma kept herself occupied the whole time. Mostly bugging the guy next to us who was trying to sleep. That was a long day. By the time we got to Santa Barbara, after landing in LAX, it was 2:30am, Michigan time. I was exhausted. But the kids were troopers.
We extended our trip 2 weeks so be able to come up here to Sac & visit. In order to get up here, we made a pitstop in Pismo Beach to see Jeff's grandparents. We met up with his mom & step-dad there and they drove us up here. We got here yesterday. So, now it's 2 weeks in Sac to visit anybody I can.