To Michigan and Back: Part I

We got back on Tuesday from our first family vacation. We went out to Michigan to visit Brian's family--grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. It was a really nice trip, with the exception of one thing--the flight out there! I will never again take a red-eye flight across the country with a toddler (I guess that Bailey is a toddler now)! Bailey has never cried so much in her entire life as she did on the flight to Atlanta. It was 4 1/2 hours of crying, screaming, and trying to break free. We were in the last row, so no reclining seats and we had two extremely rude people in front of us. The woman actually said, "If that were my child, she'd be dead on the runway by now!" Can you believe it?! And that was even before we took off. I'm really glad that Brian didn't hear because he would have tried to kill that woman. I'm not going to talk about it any more because we did survive, but just barely.

This is a picture of Bailey on our flight from Atlanta to Detroit; see how chipper she looks! This flight wasn't full so we each got our own reclining seats. She fell fast asleep about five minutes after I took this picture.

We stayed with his cousins Marty and Melanie and their two kids Marty and Mallory. Bailey and Mallory are two days apart, so it was really fun to watch them play together. Little Marty adored Bailey and called her all week, "cute, tiny, Bailey!" We had unusually wonderful weather for this time of year and I only got two tiny mosquito bites, so I'm going to call the trip a success! Here's our trip through pictures:

Aunt Nancy picked us up from the airport on Thursday morning. After some visiting and naps, we spent the afternoon walking around Rochester. We ate lunch at Knapps, which is the best place in town. That night we drove to Marty and Melanie's house. One thing that is different from California is that everything is so far spread out. To get anywhere we had to drive at least 30 minutes, but it was really nice to be able to check everything out. Gram and Pop were nice enough to let us use their car, so we enjoyed our drives in the nice, comfy seats. Friday we spent the day adjusting to the time change and just playing with the kids around the house. At night Brian, Marty, Melanie, and I went to Detroit for a night out on the town. Thanks to Aunt Harriet, Uncle Fred, and Aunt Nancy who were on babysitting duty that night. We heard the kids gave them a run for their money, but they all survived. We ate some yummy food in Greek Town before heading to the Tigers baseball game. People in Detroit are serious about their sports teams. Everyone in the stadium was wearing some sort of Tigers gear. The Tigers won the game and we watched fireworks after. Once we found our way back to Greek Town we went to a popular bakery and ordered delicious treats. Brian then had to order a small pizza from Pizza Papalis--the best pizza place ever! We were going to eat it the next day for lunch, but we decided to make it our midnight snack on the way back home. I know it sounds like we're total pigs, but it really was delicious!

Here's the picture of our extreme pig out in the McDonald's parking lot because we had to get drinks to go with our pizza.