The Coming Together

Today the true vacation finally began.  Lily and I left the house at 7am to get to National for our flight to Denver.  The flights themselves were uneventful, filled with the standard babies crying and airline attempts at gouging for crappy snacks and signing people up for credit cards.  The advertising pisses me off the same way that seeing a commercial  in the movie theater before the movie for the first time pissed me off.  That's dirty pool, man.

The 4 hour layover was eventful in a few ways.  Lily and I pigged out on Wolfgang Puck, Caramel Apples dipped in M&Ms, and marshmallows dipped in very rich milk chocolate.  We also got punchy and lost our minds together at the same time.  And those of you who also see my facebook posts know that the Denver airport was losing Sutcliffes at an alarming rate!

Then the slow motion running in a field toward each other culminating in the big spinny hug happened in the Sioux Falls airport.  We were a family again!  We didn't even argue or yell at Lily for never getting out of the damned car in a reasonable amount of time for a good half an hour after we were reunited.  Man that kid can take a year doing anything!

We didn't get adventurous for our dinner tonight, Clare preferred the standard American/midwestern fare of Perkins, even though there was a Pho option AND an Ethiopian option in Sioux Falls.  Only 1 of each in the yellow pages, but given my expectation was ZERO there was infinityzillion percent more of those places than i thought there'd be. (that's advanced statistics there)

Scenic Sioux Falls is reminiscent of Helena Montana, to me. Just the look of the roads, the western looking buildings, the hills, the Taco Johns(6 pack and a pound, 8.49), takes me back.   There are actual falls here too.  They are in a lovely park that smells ever so much like POOP.  Not like farm cow or pig or even chicken poop.  We're talking "oh-no-he-didn't-just-do-that-in-that-bush" homeless guy downtown kind of poop here.  Classy this blog, huh?  Can't tell it's John doing it now, can you?

Other than the atmospherics, the park was gorgeous, the weather was spectacular, the 3 60+ year old guys in the cover band doing Frankie Valli and Orleans and other oldies were pretty good and the rocks were eminently climbable for Lily.  It was a really good start to the family vacation.

Song for the day was Firework by Katy Perry.  You've not seen nuthin' till you've seen me bust a move to that while driving the minivan through Sioux Falls.  I'll let Clare post her day, since she and Lil are passed out right now.  Travel stats:  12 hours travel time from the house in Oakton to the minivan in Sioux Falls.  We travelled to the Mountain time zone, then back to Central.  Clare did send me a cool picture of crossing the Mississippi.

Tomorrow we go see the Presidents, I hope Lil's not disappointed that they won't be racing.