Austin to Spokane - July 13, 2019

Hey - it’s been a year! Vacation time again. This year our travels take us north, specifically Montana and Banff, with a few other places thrown in the mix as well. Today was a big travel day. We left Austin early this afternoon, had a nice long flight to Sacramento, hour layover, another hour plus flight to Spokane, WA. Was a short drive from the airport to our downtown hotel. Dinner at a lovely upscale place (gotta start off right!), and now a quiet evening. There were a few highlights of the day...

Alex is officially old enough to go through airport security sans adult. So that was fun for him. Well, until his groin area triggered the scanner. So, first time through and the poor kid has to have a groin area pat down. He survived 😝.

It has been awhile since i’ve flown. I was surprised that food now has to be scanned separately. I never suspected the unopened boxes of cheezits and granola bars could ever be dangerous.

The flights were largely uneventful, but the boys kept interrupting my nap to show me things out of the window I coildn’t See ;)

We are driving a Cadillac for the next two weeks. Yeah, I don’y Know why either, but it’s nice!

It’s a whole lot of fun traveling with kids that are maturing. It’s easy, it’s nice, it’s fun. This is a very cool age for the boys.

And finally, what a difference being able to hear has made. So much of the stress and tension I normally feel with traveling was just gone today. I had never imagined it was simply because I was trying so hard to hear and process and make sense of things I simply couldn’t grasp. Now that I can hear, everything is so much easier. I had contemplated leaving the hearing aids at home - it’s a fair amount of extra stuff to pack, there are activities that I will have to remember to leave them out for, i’d Be lying if I said I wasn’t still a bit self conscious about them. Anyway, it’s nice to be able to piece together a little more of what most other people get.

The next couple of weeks should be a lot of fun.