7 months, 24 Days: Best Traveling Baby Ever

I'm baaaaaack!

As my blog title says, I'm here to post adventures, big and small.  Sorry it's taken me a while to write anything, but as I mentioned before, our adventures were on the wee smaller side.  BUT-we just got back from our cross-country excursion and have a lot of photos to post!

First, let's rewind and start with:

Thursday, July 17

We broke out the door jumper again.  He loved it!

Bucket head Leif!

 Saturday, July 19

Bored, decided to take family photos on bed.  Turned out okay, Miles ran off right before this.

Decided to explore Vasquez with the hiking baby backpack since Leif can sit up on his own.  Such a little monkey!

Leif did great at Vasquez in the carrier

Sunday, July 20

Over the last month, Leif has grown more curiosity for Miles.  I have a feeling they're going to be best buds.

Sunday, July 27

Ariel & Elise's wedding day.  Had a good time!

Leif was a smashing hit with his cute outfit

 Wednesday, July 30

My brother John had a job to do in Cali, he was able to stop and visit!

Om nom Salsa and Beer!  (not for Leif of course...)

 Friday, August 1

It was so hot that week that we decided to get out into better AC.  We ended up at Barnes and Noble, Leif found his competition.  :)

Saturday, August 2

Leif helped his daddy set up a fun board game

Sunday, August 3

More family photo time!

Cute outfit day for Leif; went through his drawers to box up his too small clothing.  He's growing so fast!

My little Dave Matthews fan

 Wednesday, August 6

Leif and his daddy, they love their polos and stripes!

Thursday, August 7

This is Leif and his bath duck.  He loves taking baths in it!

Saturday, August 9

We tried out a new burger joint; not too bad, but nothing great.  Leif was all over the place!

Sunday, August 10

So a laundry basket proved entertaining for Leif; sort of a make-shift wagon on carpet!

Monday, August 11

Sometimes Leif won't eat unless he gets to put the spoon in his mouth.  When has my baby become a kid?!

There was my fast-forward rendition of the last month or so.  Now here's our trip to Rochester!

Wednesday, August 13
I left work early to finish packing and get ready for our long red-eye flight.  I obviously over-packed, but I wanted to be prepared for everything and anything!

At the Burbank airport-got through security just fine!

Leif on his first plane!  (check out the lady in the background...she looks happy.  I saw her towards our descent to JFK putting on makeup for a long time...)

Leif loves the TVs on JetBlue as much as we do.

 Right as we started taking off, I fed Leif and then-voila-he fell asleep!  Since he likes to sleep in weird positions, I had to take him out of the carrier which meant I couldn't sleep in fear of him falling off of me.  I think I had maybe half an hour of sleep-but I rather take that then a fussy baby!  Once we landed in JFK, Leif woke up and was fine for our three hour layover.  We boarded the plane to Rochester (a smaller but more roomier plane) and as I fed Leif on take-off, he fell asleep once again in a much more comfier position allowing me to sleep.  Yay for an hour of sleep!

I think this was above JFK-Matt took this from the plane!

Thursday, August 14

Needless to say, hubs and I were zombies all day Thursday.  We were able to catch a hotel shuttle from the airport and checked in fine.  Since we were in a commercial area, we took a walk over to a highly recommended sandwich place, DiBella's.  O.   M.    G.    We fell in love with that place!

Waiting for my delicious sub.

Leif still catching up on his ZZZs, slept through lunch

We took a nap after lunch and Leif had peed through his clothes; with fresh new clothing we went to see my folks who made it to the hotel!

The afternoon nap was very long, so when my folks came we went down to have hotel dinner...bah.  It was disgusting.  Afterwards we went shopping for a few things and then bought Burger King for a late make-up dinner.  That was gross too.  At least our subs for the day were amazing!

Friday, August 15
Surprisingly Leif slept throughout the night (besides his usual 3-4 hour snack callings) and we got up nice and early for hotel breakfast.  It was better than dinner, but not by much.

sleepy Leif

We got ready quickly and rushed out to Barbie's wedding rehearsal/lunch.  We anticipated it would take a while to get there, but it was different than expected.  Here everything takes a while to get to because it's just so crowded and the city is spread out.  There we would go through small towns where we had to slow down, and even saw a few Amish people.  We arrived right at noon and did a couple takes on the rehearsal (rehearsal photos courtesy of the Hubs-my iPhone doesn't take as good of photos of course!).

On the balcony of the Ginny Lee Cafe

Me and my fake bouquet

Most of the wedding party

Yum, rehearsal lunch!

After a yummy lunch, we made our way back to Rochester, me immediately falling asleep due to the small amount of alcohol in my system.  Woke up with a little headache, but wasn't too bad.  We changed and left Leif with my folks while we borrowed the rental car for a little date night.  Hubs dropped me off at Barbie's so that I could catch up with her a little while he went and got a quick haircut.  Then it was off to the most comfiest movie theater to see Guardians of the Galaxy-we absolutely loved the movie!  I want to see it again on the big screen!


Saturday, August 16

Wedding Day!!!!  Here are the photos I have; hubs took a lot, so I'll post them later...

Barbie's mom Kay and bridesmaid Sarah getting their hair "did"

The bride getting her hair worked on

Family and bridesmaids waiting

Maid of Honor concentrating.  Look at those curls!

My finished hair sans makeup

Traditional eyeball photo of Barbie.  :)  Yes, we're close like that.

We talked about how we never pumped gas on our wedding days; I'm sure this was a memorable experience for Barbie.

All the bridesmaids were taking selfies :)

The lovely bridesmaids!!

Barbie walking over to Andy, first look!

Yay!

Barbie's folks looking lovely

Selfie with the bride!

Lining up before the ceremony, Barbie was taking a deep breath in and out.

Wedding party gathering before ceremony

It started raining towards the end of the ceremony; good thing I had an umbrella!  Look at my Leify, he was absolutely adorable!!

My pa took this photo-I handed my umbrella over to Barbie, snuck under my mom's

Before we ate, Leif got to eat his food.  These pouches were awesome for traveling!

Always happy Leif.

Leif loves our glasses.

Daddy ate my hand!

Yay hubs for being a trooper!

Haha, so, I feel like I look really skinny in this photo.  I love these types of photos.

Woohoo, Andy getting the garter!

I can't stress how awesome Leif was at the wedding; he got a little vocal during the speeches, took a brief nap, but stayed up until we left around 10:30pm!

Sheena, MOH, rocking the Flava Flav costume from the photo booth

Yay happy family 

Right after this, he bit my chin.  Leave it up to my baby to create an awkward moment.

And that was all I had of the wedding in photos.  It was a really beautiful ceremony with live music, and the reception was filled with so much happiness!  I wish we could have stayed until the end, but Leif needed to get back to the hotel to sleep and it was about 40 minutes away.  Congrats Mr. and Mrs. Brown!  I'm so happy I had the chance to be a part of your beautiful wedding!

Sunday, August 17

Since the rental car barely fit out luggage, folks, hubs and baby, I had to catch a ride with Barbie.  But they had to clean up the winery so off I went with them.

Panorama of Wagner Winery-a much sunnier day than the rest of the time we were there before!

Once we arrived at Barbie's place, we unloaded and then my family showed up.  I didn't mention yet that hubs had eaten at DiBella's twice already.  We were on our way for his third time...haha.

The Godfather...mmmmm....

Then we decided to take a trip out to this haunted winery that my folks saw on Ghost Hunters instead of going to Niagra Falls; apparently the Canadian side is better than the American side, but we didn't have our passports.

Didn't see any ghosts, but did buy some delicious wine!

On our way back we stopped to walk along the Erie Canal which was really pretty.

For our last dinner we tried out "Sticky Lips BBQ" which was right next to our hotel.  It was yummmmmy!

Monday, August 18

Our last day in Rochester, we decided to grab some donuts and coffee from Tim Horton then to "High Falls" in the middle of downtown Rochester.

 Then we stopped at, where else, DiBella's, for subs to go and off to the airport.

Tried to get his energy out before we boarded.  He's in love with "drinking" from our water bottles, meaning putting his mouth on the lid and that's about it!

Everything went smoothly again-Leif remained awake almost the whole flight to JFK, but then fell asleep before landing and woke up right before boarding to Burbank.  He was pretty squirmy for a couple hours but then passed out for the last four hours of the flight.  Couldn't have asked for a better time with him!  Once we landed, our good luck ran out...we didn't see our stroller which we gate checked in Rochester to come to Burbank.  They said check baggage claim.  Not there.  We ended up at the JetBlue luggage office for an hour and a half, waiting for the folks before us to work out their lost luggage before giving our info.  Apparently when you gate check something, it's supposed to be picked up at where ever you land, regardless if it's a layover.  So, our stroller was still stuck in JFK.  Luckily though they delivered it to us late last night.  Phew.

Tuesday, August 19

I took the day off to get settled back in and relax a little with the fam.  We had to pick up Miles, so we went out to lunch first before picking him up...

Of course we went to Salsa and Beer!  Leif ate his whole pouch, got fussy so we had to take turns holding him and scarfing our food down.  

And pretty much we hung out the rest of the day at home.  Yay for being home, not yay for the hot weather.  I kind of miss the cloudy, overcast days in Rochester!  I wish we had just a little more time to actually "vacation" in Rochester, but who knows, we might be back sooner than later.  :)