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Last Friday morning, I couldn't sleep. I woke up at 2 a.m. Who does that when they have strep? Me. Feeling like ass, throat closing, I couldn't swallow, and my antibiotics were not kicking in fast enough to suit me. That's ok, I got all packed, loaded, and played around on the internet, loaded myself a book, Blood, Bones, and Butter, which I got to read for book club on this trip. My book club met tonight, and we discussed it, and I was happy to say I'd read it. Didn't like it, but read it. I am tired of reading stories about characters I don't like, people that make really stupid decisions. But this blog isn't about stupid people, this one is about the Brave and the Crazy. To start, my sister moving to Texas, to live at last with her husband in a happy little army base house, like Betty Crocker. But first, we had to get there. We learned a lot of things about each other on this trip, and I've learned some things since I got back.
Anyway, to start, for some crazy reason, we had an early flight. We were at the airport at 6. OK, I was, and Lisa and the girls were running late, but with all the cuteness, that's understandable.
First thing we learned was that Charlie is not a morning person.
Annie could've cared less.
Though as it turns out Lisa doesn't like flying. Though we haven't flown together in probably 2 decades, so I did not realize this until she broke out the wine at 6:30 in the morning to take the edge off. Gotta get rid of it before Security somehow, right?!
Annie loves flying. And with dueling ipads for each girl, the flights were successes for both. It was weird to pack just for me. I may have overpacked to have enough toys, games, snacks, for children that weren't mine. That's not weird is it? Either way it was a good thing to have so much crap, it kept the girls pretty content. A lot more content than that horrid flight when Sam was 15 months old and heinous in my lap on a trip to Florida.
Charlie started to get a little punchy. And crazy. But even her level of punchy and crazy was still pretty adorable. On the second leg, from Atlanta to ELP she started playing Peet Bu behind the chair to Annie and I. She kept popping up, laughing hysterically, I'd try to take her picture, and down she'd go again. For this one shot, I got 4 empty chair pictures. I was ready to throw that little point and shoot off the plane. Turns out I had inadvertantly changed a setting, causing a delay. Didn't find that out until I was ready to return the camera to amazon when I came home.
Lisa found a way to calm Charlie down. Aren't they cute? So totally related. I have sworn Lisa, Charlie, and Sam all look alike when they sleep. It's still true.
Our landing in El Paso was bumpy, it put Lisa on edge. But the girls thought flying was wonderful, and they were even more excited to see Daddy. James won the 'race' of Truck vs. Plane. Just barely. But the girls' enjoyment of the flight was Nothing compared with their joy of seeing their new home.
It has a surprising amount of storage space, every time we turned around, we'd find more. There was this giant storage closet off the living room, much better than the 2.5 assigned shelves that James told us that the army declared necessary. We found another closet out back, and a cabinet out front. Hooray for hidden storage!
First stop: The P/X. We needed Everything. So much had been gone, trashed, lost, that we kept making list after list, so after we made beds, crash napped, we got up and went to the store. Turns out the P/X was huge. I'd only been to the Comissary at Fort Ben once, and this stuff is Huge. There are 30K people at Fort Bliss, so they Need this giant Kohl's/Sears to buy Stuff. It rocked. Even better it was connected to a mall, indoor/outdoor. And all within walking distance of Lisa. Now we didn't walk it, it's like 3 blocks, but that's because a. it was hot, and b. we were buying a lot of crap.
After shopping round one, we had to stop and rest. In the cushy seats inside the mall. And then we found some awesomely stereotypically Texan Cactus Gardens outside. I was really loving the stereotype stuff, cowboys in their boots, and people saying y'all....
And cactuses, something just wonderful about all the cactuses. Really I loved the location. Sure, it's hot, but it was pretty nestled in the high desert between a few mountains. Really reminded me of L.A.
And along our theme of mocking all things stereotypically Texan, deep fried jalapenos at dinner, and a giant tub of peppers at the commissary.
The last one from that first day in El Paso, I tried to capture the Blue Moon with my little point and shoot, not much to shout out about, but it was a Beautiful night.
Once in a Blue Moon, you get to have an adventure like this, I'm so glad this was mine.