Christmas bells were not the only bells ringing the week before the 25th. My cousin, Victoria, the only girl in our cousin pool, promised Conner she would marry him. Where is Morgan City, Louisiana? Good question that I had to google myself. It’s about halfway between New Orleans and Lafayette. Which means—it is in the middle of nowhere and surrounded by swamps. This is where the groom was born and raised so it makes sense as a destination for the wedding.

Having a low attention span— Grant and I have to constantly be stimulated with something new and exciting. New, Now, Next. That is the reason why we love to go to New York City. Even when we have nothing officially planned— we can somehow do a little bit of research and map out an entire trip—during the trip.

This is how we choose our travel destinations. Grant randomly searches GoogleFlights and finds a spontaneous sale on a nonstop weekend flight to Chicago in November. He turns to Emily and me at dinner in Cafe Coyote (San Diego) and goes “want to go to Chicago? He waited a few seconds to make sure no one objected and the response was pretty quiet. Which was his queue to proceed with “I am going to book three flights.” Once again no major objections. And just like that…we are on an adventure to Chicago.

This post is way past due, but I figured…why not! Life has been crazy and we had a very up and down October. But it is still worth memorializing what happened as there were some really fun moments that we will want to remember.

Alaska was originally owned by Russia in the late 1800s as a fur trading colony. When the fur-trading dried up, Russia was saddled with a liability rather than an asset. Looking to dispose of this territory, Russia reached out to the US a fledgling country to acquire the land. At the time, Canada was not its own country and the territory was owned by Great Britain. Russia and Great Britain were at odds with one and other and there was no chance they would allow their greatest rival to gain more land. After acquiring Alaska, it sat dormant for quite a while until finally in 1959 it became a state.

As a planner, you do things in advance. You attempt to anticipate any problem and attempt to solve the problem before it originates. In heading to Mexico, we booked our flight, hotel, car rental, etc. — easy for us with as much as we travel. I did my homework and found what forms were necessary to avoid delays and we were off to Mexico without any issue.

Like clockwork, every year we find ourselves in New Braunfels, Texas to go to our favorite waterpark – Schlitterbahn. This is not like a traditional waterpark as it is a mega-park where the whole experience is divided into 3 sections that you can only connect to by bus. There seemed to have been more water in this area than in all of California!

COVID is still here, and while it was looking like things were turning around the Delta Varient is causing a bit of an uproar. Most of our friends have been vaccinated and feel comfortable being in social gatherings. Events are beginning to transpire again including our annual tradition of Best of San Diego and Cinespia’s Slumber Party.

Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? The answer in our case is Yes, Yes, Yes, and let's add a few more stops just to make sure we hit everything possible. This elongated weekend had us departing on Friday night to Pittsburgh and making our way up to Buffalo to depart back home. Our style of hitting the highlights of the city and moving quickly to another proved valuable in a trip that had us visit— Pittsburgh, PA, Sandusky, OH, Cleveland, OH, Niagara Falls, NY, Buffalo, NY, and somehow as I type this stuck in Chicago, IL with a layover that seems to never want to end.

Some people have been sheltering in place for a year and are just now coming out of hibernation. For us, it has only been a month, but like standard Grant and Luke shenanigans we definitely packed in quite a bit. At this time, we have decided to pause the adoption process and have been riding that emotional roller coaster. We are looking at different options to pursue, but giving ourselves a break for a bit to figure out what we want to do.

A delayed birthday trip to New England sounded like an amazing way to ring in the huge milestone of turning 34 years old. You only turn that random age once so why not do something equally as random like visit Boston during a pandemic. After a 5.5 hour direct flight from San Diego to Boston, we were there to embrace whatever we could.

The United States is closed, but Florida has decided to secede from that idea. Upon landing in Florida we were greeted with hundreds if not thousands of happy travelers ready to enjoy the Disney World or the Conservative Political Action Committee Conference with keynote speaker Donald Trump. However, we were not in town for either of those events, but rather our friend’s (Debbie and Andrew) wedding.

If there was a gold medal for running late and finding a way to still make that event on time— we would be awarded the gold medal. While this is incredibly stressful, it does make an ordinary trip a lot more interesting, but maybe not for the right reasons.

What do you do when you are in a pandemic and have a three-day weekend? How about joining a family who is already on a road trip? Sounds reasonable.

Grant and I climbed on a flight Sunday morning for Phoenix where we met up with Erica and Ashley. They had rented an SUV and have been driving from San Diego to Utah, Colorado, and Arizona. With a car full of gear and a cat named Molly— they went cruising the highways in search of the notable and obscure sites.

With a light dusting of the white stuff falling on our faces last week in Dallas, Grant booked us a flight to Denver to get the heavier stuff. With Ripley’s health (dog) still a concern I didn’t want to be away to long. The 2-hour direct flight left San Diego at 6:15am and was set to return that same night at 11:30pm. The problem—after a tumultuous night of jockeying for position in bed with Ripley (he decided to play dirty and bark as well as kick me)...I didn’t want snow, I wanted sleep.

Having traveled enough we have learned a few tricks to get steals on flights. Grant’s favorite trick is to use Skiplagged- an app that looks at layovers rather than final destinations to see if there may be a discounted rate. A trip from San Diego to Dallas direct was $200, however, a trip from San Diego to Dallas to Denver was only $100. We grabbed the cheaper one and we’re off to Dallas to celebrate Grant’s 35th birthday. This is not our usual birthday celebration for him, but since Vegas or Palm Springs is out— this works! Plus, I have been told that we are doing a mid-year birthday celebration to make up for missed time celebrating with friends. Everyone save the date in July!

To begin 2020, we were climbing the Great Wall of China. To begin 2021, we were throwing beads at people off a rooftop deck in New Orleans. Not quite the same, but this does exemplify the attitude Grant and I have shared throughout 2020– live life and have fun no matter what. With 2021 being rung in and the world still a mess— we couldn’t be more sure we made the right choice to continue living our best lives in 2020 and enjoy each day to the fullest.