Hello from LAX

Just a quick blog before we board the plane.  We had a great time yesterday with Brittany and Michael.  I'll write a blog about that when I have time.

Hardly slept at all last night, thanks to our 10 month old.  After getting up with her 3 times between 10pm and 4am, we finally brought her to bed with us after 5am.  She wanted to play.  Finally she fell asleep around 6am I think.  She fell asleep with her head on Mark's head.  And then she rolled over the her back, but her head was still on Mark's head.  Kinda funny... but kinda not. 

We got everything packed up, the dogs went potty, the car filled with gas all record time and we were at Avis to return the car around 11am.  Since the car was completely packed, they wanted us to leave all the stuff in it, and I rode the bus to the airport, and someone from Avis drove Mark and Abbie and the dogs and everything else in the car and dropped them off.  The only problem was, we had them drop us off at United, since that's who are flights were booked thru.  But we're actually flying Lufthansa, so we had to hike about a mile with ALL our junk to get to the right terminal since no taxi would take us.  I asked about 3 of them and they all said they couldn't pick up on the departures area.  Nice.  So I strapped Abbie on in the Ergo and I pushed one cart full of luggage and Mark pushed the other and pulled one suitcase and we made it.

It took a while to check in.  But the dogs are checked in cargo and we're down to one luggage cart of carry-on stuff.  We grabbed lunch in the terminal and now we're supposed to board in 15 mins.  Abbie's climbing all over the place.  She hasn't taken a nap yet, so this might be interesting....

Our camera (the little one, not my DLSR) broke yesterday.  Bummer.  It's 5 years old though.  But it doesn't work so we won't be taking pictures on the flight at all.  Not that we would have anyway.  I'll buy a new one when we get over there.  Anyone have a Canon SD 1400 or SD 1300 you'd like to give a review on?  I think that's the one we'll get.

That's all for now.  Wish us luck.  This is the part I've been dreading for quite a while but Abbie's been relatively great so far today.  Let's hope she does well on the flight.  As of right now, we're not sitting together.  Mark is like 8 rows away from Abbie and me, but we're hoping someone will switch.  Pray that the dogs arrive safely.  I got teary eyed turning them over to someone else, but had to laugh when we heard Ollie's vicious bark as soon as he was out of sight.  He won't let anything near him....

More soon... from ITALY!!!!