The Lewallen Christmas Adventure Part 1....Unplanned "Fun" in Phoenix

First thing Monday morning we headed to the airport to take off on our Lewallen family Christmas adventure. It was very early but our boys were ready to go.

Kade was all prepped and ready because he kept asking us when we were going through security because he had to take his shoes off.

Ryne, on the other hand, wasn't so worried about getting his shoes off....he just kept looking around enjoying the hustle and bustle of a Christmas time airport setting.

I have to say that we had a great experience at the airport on Monday morning. SeaTac really had their act together. The people at security were super nice and happy...even gave Kade and Ryne those nifty stickers they were wearing above. And I wish that I had kept my camera out and ready because right after we got through security we saw a real live toy soldier, Santa and his elf cruising around handing out gifts to all the children, Christmas carolers all dressed up and caroling through the terminal....it was a fabulous atmosphere. And of course Kade and Ryne were really taking it all in.

Then we found this cool place:

A play place for the kiddos that they were completely excited about.
I must admit that Kyle and I were super excited about it too because it let us get the boys down and play for a while before they had to get all cooped up on an airplane.

Speaking of airplanes, Ryne practiced flying one.

And Kade tried out everything...I mean there wasn't a piece of play place that went untouched by this guy.

After a good bit of play time we loaded two happy boys up on a plane headed to Phoenix where we were going to catch another plane headed to Denver where we were going to catch another plane headed to Tulsa where Granna and Paw would be waiting to pick us up!

The boys did great on the flight and we made it to Phoenix with no problem.

The plane scheduled to take us to Denver, however, did have some problems. It was really late getting to Phoenix...so late that we had already missed our flight from Denver to Tulsa.

Of course Kyle spent some time with the agents at the airport trying to figure out how to get to Tulsa. It was impossible! Yep, no getting to Tulsa on Monday. Our options were to spend the night in Phoenix and get to Tulsa by way of Dallas the next day or go ahead to Denver on our scheduled flight and hang out there until Christmas eve. We stayed the night in Phoenix!

Here is Kade making the most of our home for the day.

He was excited about being in a hotel with a "backyard" (courtyard) and a pool. But then he was disappointed that we didn't pack his swimming trunks. Which it wouldn't have mattered if we had packed them because we did not have any luggage....you know what kind of extra fun that meant!

Here is Ryne standing at the back door just wanting so badly to get out in that "backyard" of ours.
We did let the boys go play in the "backyard" and they had a big time.

We had dinner at the hotel and Kade got to sit in these cool chairs that he admired when we first checked in:

We all went to bed at 7:15 that night because we were exhausted. It was GREAT!!!! Wish I could arrange for that to happen at least once a week at our house. We woke up nice and refreshed....well, we did have some new t-shirts that Kyle picked up for us and thankfully we had hotel soap, shampoo, toothpaste and deodorant....so I should say somewhat refreshed and took off for the airport again.

No problems making it to Dallas and look what we found when we got to Dallas:

Whomever came up with the idea of putting play places in airports is my hero.

I think that person is probably Ryne's hero, too!

He really enjoyed time out of his stroller.

We had a pretty long layover in Dallas. We had time to go into a restaurant to eat. Kade picked
Chili's because he sees the commercials but we don't have one near us. He loves the "I want my baby back, baby back, baby back, baby back ribs" commercial. And he was really looking forward to having some baby back ribs. Guess what....airport Chili's doesn't serve baby back ribs. I was so proud of Kade because he did not have a complete meltdown. He was very disappointed but settled for a grilled cheese sandwich and did great.

By the time we ate, played and wandered around the airport for a bit this is what we looked like:

Oh yes, you could definitely tell we were on day two of our airport extravaganza....a bit tattered and worn. We were very happy when it came time for us to board the plane headed to Tulsa.
And look who found us there:

Thanks for coming to Tulsa to get us Granna and Paw!

We were all very happy to be finished at airports for a few days.

I have to give a great big thank you to Kade and Ryne because they we

re troopers. They really did well on our extended trip to Oklahoma. We could have been miserable but we weren't. We just enjoyed getting to hang out together "as a family" as Kade would say.

Granna and Paw got us to Spiro on Tuesday night and the adventure continued.

Part 2 of the Lewallen family Christmas adventure still to come.