The Lazy H Climbing Club: Florida

We got to spend a weekend in Florida with Janelle, Lucas, & Axel. Logan was super excited about the airport. This must be one of the best parts of having kids-- getting to share a little bit of the joy they get out of every day things that we long ago wrote off as inconvenient and annoying. Its kind of like school buses. Where as before they were unnoticed at best or annoying if you got stuck behind one, now my automatic reaction to seeing a school bus is, hurray, a school bus! And if we're lucky enough to get behind one, which doesn't happen often, so much the better for studying its every movement, the way the lights flash, the sign comes out, the kids get on and off, and imagining that far away day when we're five and we finally get to ride one.

The airport was like that for Logan. He thought the parking garage was awesome. The elevator, the escalator, the moving walkway, the train-- pretty much a 2 year old's amusement park. As we heard the train approaching, he turned and said breathlessly "Is it Thomas?" We were pretty sure it was one of his friends at least. Riding the escalators up and down and practicing our dismounts killed a good half hour. Pushing buttons on the elevator was thrilling. He loved the conveyor through the security scanner, loved looking out the windows watching all the little trucks zoom around the planes loading bags and refueling the planes. He kept turning to me with this big open grin saying "I'm so excited!" The highlight was when a pilot boarded the plane right in front of us. Logan spotted him in the terminal and then it was like we were standing next to his lifelong hero for the next 5 minutes. He just stared at him and turned to me every so often to make sure I was equally impressed.

One thing Logan was not so impressed with was sitting in his own seat. I had to hold him down during takeoff and he through a huge fit. We were on a little plane and I’m sure everyone thought I was torturing the poor child with the way he screamed. On the up side, he wore himself out with all the struggling and slept the rest of the way there.

Logan was super excited to see his cousins. He and Axel had a ball riding in the car together and playing super heroes, legos, trains, and hide and seek. Lucas would make funny faces and do silly dances and Logan thought he was hysterical. Axel gave Logan a bagful of his Thomas trains that’s he’s outgrown. Logan was in love and sleeps with them every night now. The first night he got them in Florida, he lined the trains up along his pillow in bed (which was a mattress on the floor next to our bed). The next morning, the trains were there, but Logan was not. I looked everywhere, and finally got out a flashlight and found him under our bed—way in the middle, where he’d had to wiggle past all sorts of other things stored under the bed to get there. I had to pull him out by his feet. I have no idea what motivated him to crawl way under there, but it seems his trains had priority for the bed.

We’ve been looking at pictures today and Logan keeps asking to go over to Lucas & Axel's house. If only if it was that easy. Here are some photos from the weekend: