Road Trip

We headed up north to see Ryan's family for the long weekend. His oldest brother, Doug, and his family live in Danville (East Bay, for those of you familiar with the San Francisco area). We had first gotten the idea to go up there from Ryan's parents and then found out that the rest of the Rich clan was going as well - so it was a mini Rich family vacation.

(BTW - sorry for the lack of pictures... I was so not on top of it this trip)

Ryan, Westin and I left Santa Monica on Thursday night to make the 5 hour drive north. It was Westin's first road trip and he was sooooo good. He slept about 90% of the time...

And when he was awake, he pretty much just chilled in his car seat staring at his toy...


We got in really late and immediately headed to bed. Friday morning Ryan went golfing with his brother Trevor and brother-in-law Brian. It was horrible weather for golfing (rain and wind), but they made it through all 18 holes. However, Ryan came home vowing he'd never play again... so I'm guessing the weather conditions didn't really play in his favor.

That night all the adults went to dinner at Esin - one of Doug and Jan's favorite places. We had an excellent meal which was made even better by Doug and Jan's big announcement... Jan is PREGNANT with #4!!! She's due at the end of September. We're so excited for them and even more excited that Westin will have another cousin around his age.

On Saturday Ryan, Trevor, Adam, Camille, Doug, Rick and Connie headed down to Stanford. Doug gave them a walking tour of the downtown area and then the group did a guided tour of the Filoli mansion (think Hearst Castle). From what I hear the mansion was absolutely amazing. If you're interested in seeing it, here's a link: http://www.filoli.org/

Since it was such a long day trip and rather cold outside, I stayed back with Westin, along with Jan and Lindsay and their kids. We had lunch and the kids saw a movie. And for Valentine's Day evening, the girls ditched the boys to go see Confessions of a Shopaholic (Jan and Lindsay read the books and said the movie was nothing like them - and they were rather disappointed. I didn't read the books and thought it was just OK).

I don't think the boys were too disappointed by our departure... they spent the night playing Rockband.

I got home just in time to capture this video of the Rich Band.


The kids also loved the Wii - their favorite game was Mario Cart.

Sunday was spent at church and eating a lot of food... and then we had to head back home on Monday. Unfortunately, a storm set in Monday morning and made our trek back a little difficult. I had no idea that SNOW could actually be a problem for our roads here in California. We were about 3 hours into our drive when we found out that the 5 Freeway was closed through Grapevine (which goes through the mountains) and we'd either have to sit and wait until it opened or find another route. Since we had no idea when it would open, we decided to find another route. So Ryan got on the phone with Doug and he helped us find some other options. We could either go west and hook up to the 101 (which would probably add 3 hours to the drive) or go east through Bakersfield and hook up to the 14 (which would probably add about 2 hours). We obviously went with the shorter option. However, once we got to Bakersfield, Doug called back and said the 5 was open again. Fortunately, there was a freeway through Bakersfield that hooked back up with the 5. So basically we took a one hour detour to Bakersfield that had no real benefit to us other than we were able to go to Sonic (still the best Diet Coke around - hands down).

We finally got to the 5 Freeway at the Grapevine and this is what we found... I could have sworn I was driving through Utah. This doesn't even do the snow justice. There was a ton.

And this is me in the back with Westin completely bored at about hour 6 in the drive...

We made it back safe and sound and now I'm working on about 4 loads of laundry and catching up on some sleep. Ryan is at work, of course, but he is in town this week (yay!) so we're all happy about that.