It’s not Christmas in July, it’s July at Christmas! I (Andy) am finally starting on the photos from Leilani’s and my trip to Ohio way back in July (I promised Sonja I would write these posts, lets not say when). When we upload the more recent Christmas photos, we’ll probably move these posts around.
With Kaua’i being a major tourist destination, we’re quite fortunate to have lots of flights to the mainland. Sometimes, you can get just the right flight, and if you’re lucky, it won’t be too expensive. We left Kaua’i on Friday afternoon on a direct flight to SFO, where we changed planes at 11pm and got the red-eye to Chicago. Leilani got the Nintendo out even before going through security and was then too excited to sleep on the first flight (that’ll teach the parents to make it a special airplane-only game):
And in SFO, we got lucky and had neighboring gates, with a kid-play area in between them! Leilani was still a bit wound up and played the whole time. The play area had a weather theme, and she really liked the mini-whirlwind simulator (“Flower–that’s her toy cat, I don’t think we’re on Kaua’i anymore”–and Daddy just hopes we’re not going to Oz):
We did go for a walk up and down the terminal, where we found a cool only-in-SF kind of game: a huge touch-screen pinball game (see Sonja’s video to see it in action):
Leilani finally slept on the second flight, and of course, then I had to carry her half-asleep through Chicago O’Hare. And the walk between SF arrivals and Akron-Canton departures is at least a mile–every time I do this, I swear the tickets aren’t as good as I thought, and vow never to do it again… Chicago sunrise and Ohio fields:
But, for once, the flights were on-time, and we arrived at Great-grandma’s house early for the family reunion nearby. We got to see Andy’s cousin Ryan before he took off for a summer internship in New York:
The Kass family reunion is mostly from Jim’s half-cousins and their families (his grandfather remarried and had more children after his grandmother’s early death). Leilani is the only descendant on our side of the family. But two of her (half-3rd) cousins, Matt and Trevor, were there with their mother Pam, and we know them from when they lived in the Bay Area. I’m not going to post lots of photos of people that I barely know and Leilani won’t recognize, but here are Grandpa Jim and Grandma Rosemary:
In any case, our hosts have a beautiful house in a beautiful wooded area inside the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. This is typical summer time in Ohio: green grassy hills, forest, and daylight until 10pm–and swings:
And slip-n-slide. At first, Leilani wasn’t as good as the boys, but she tried over and over, and got much better. Then the uncles set up the double length, and she eventually mastered that too:
Leilani lasted longer than I expected, especially after all the running uphill to do the sliding. She played some more with her cousins, ate some food, and then passed out in my lap. After a while, I put her on the couch inside:
When it was time for the family portrait, she was sleeping so deeply I couldn’t wake her up. So I just carried her out for the picture, then put her back to sleep:
She slept for 4 or 5 hours, waking up only on the drive home late at night. But she still slept all night and most of the next morning.
