My hair is beginning to frizz!

Greetings from Louisiana!  It’s time for alligator farms and crawdads.  Things are going well, although we’ve had a minor hiccup with our “brand new” rental – the air conditioning unit has quit on us.  Soooo, we now have to get that fixed and that may mean more time here in the Creole state.  I’ll keep you all posted on our condition and remedy.

Today we spent the majority of our time at the NASA  Space Center in Houston.  Here are some of the highlights…

Brayden and Riley are pretending to be members of the Star Wars Republic. Don’t ask me who Riley is…I don’t remember anyone with coke-bottle glasses.

I think I can see my house from here.

Carter’s favorite part of the space center? Playing with toys in the gift shop; we must have spent 45 minutes in there.

Dad and Riley doing what they do best – eating Italian food.

This is my failed attempt to capture the “Welcome to Louisiana” sign.  We witnessed a “real” storm on our way out of Texas and into Louisiana.  Half the cars on the freeway pulled into a rest stop to wait out the storm. Brayden kept asking me if we were going to be in a tornado – if we don’t get the A/C fixed soon, I may try to chase one, just to get cool.

--Erin

Change of Plans; stopped by San Antonio, visit to the Beach

This was supposed to have been posted last night….  May 29th, 2010.

Well, we intended on going to Houston today to visit the Johnson Space Center.  It turns out that we would not have been able to get there until around 2:30pm today (they close at 7pm).  Since we were going to pass through San Antonio, we decided to visit the Alamo.  Going through those small streets made me a little concerned that I was going to hit someone or something.  We finally found a decent parking spot (or 4) in  a parking lot about a quarter mile from the Alamo.  We then walked to the Alamo. 

The building itself is rather small compared to everything else around it.  We got in line to go in, and quickly noticed how quite chaotic it was.  It could have been due to the fact that we were visiting during Memorial Day Weekend.  It was rather hot and humid.  Carter started throwing a fit inside the Alamo itself, so Erin took him outside of the building to a part of the grounds where a bunch of fountains were.  After Brayden, Riley, and I finished looking over the rest of the interior of the building, we exited and tried to meet back up with Erin.  Since my phone did not have any service, I was not able to get in touch with Erin.  I spent a good half hour with Brayden and Riley on the grounds of the Alamo.  We had a good time, except for the fact that they kept asking where Mom was (which seemed like every 2 minutes).  Not sure if that’s a good sign for me:(

As we were waiting for Erin to grab some ice cream for us, I was watching over the 3 boys.  This mainly consisted of Carter and I laughing at Brayden and Riley both chasing birds for about 15 minutes.  Brayden was excited that he got to touch one of them that he was chasing.

After San Antonio, we headed over to the beach at Surfside Beach, TX.  We stayed over there for around 2 hours.  The funny part of the beach trip was the fact that Riley had no reservations about jumping straight into the water with all of his clothes on.  We weren’t too concerned with that because we had towels and extra clothes.  Carter and Brayden both joined in the action by jumping around   in the water with their clothes on.  Thankfully, there didn’t seem to be any oil from the recent Gulf Oil Spill.  Maybe we will see some of it when we visit the beach of Louisiana.

 

 

Are we there yet? Day 3

380 miles, 6.5 hours driving

Kerrville KOA to San Antonio, TX to Surfside Beach, TX to Houston, TX

 

--Aric

Are we there yet – Day 1,2

Since this vacation is such a long one, I have decided to keep track of the number of miles and hours that we drive for each day.

May 27th – 530 miles, 10 hours – From Chandler, AZ to Guadalupe Mountains National Forest, TX

May 28th – 450 miles, 9 hours – From Guadalupe Mountains National Forest, TX to Carlsbad Caverns National Park, NM to a KOA campground near San Antonio, TX.

Tomorrow, we plan on driving over to Houston to visit the Johnson Space Center.  Should be lots of fun!!!

--Aric

Soooooooo tired!!!

I will start off by apologizing for the delay of our first blog post. (I’m new at this and have not gotten the memo on correct blogging etiquette.) My hope is to faithfully update every night, however, last night, or should I say this morning, we rolled into Carlsbad Caverns National Forest around 2AM and now you know why I’m already a day behind. The Land of Enchantment was enchanting, to say the least. We saw a great thunderstorm pass across the desert last night, complete with lightning and a bit of rain. “What’s that?” asked Riley, if he only knew the things he is going to see.

 

The “Enchanting” Griggs men.

 

Carlsbad Caverns was a little creepy, I was not aware that we had to take an elevator 1000 feet down. It reminded me a lot of an old root cellar-dark, cold (56 degrees) and a little smelly. The rock formations were incredible, I had no idea there were so many types, the boys’ favorite was the “one that looked like broccoli.” Go figure!

Deep in the heart of Texas! Has anyone ever noticed that EVERYONE in Texas drives a pick-up truck? I have never seen an opossum before, alive or dead, and Aric tells me the dead ones are prettier. I guess Texas decided to decorate their highway because there are pretty, dead opossums lined up and down their highway.

  And here he is, the man of the hour, or the past 48 hours actually, If anyone wants to know what Aric has been up to over the past 2 days – this is it! We pulled into a KOA near San Antonio around 11:30PM and are ready for some serious sleep! We are all excited to get some shut eye and a hot shower.

Goodnight from the Lone Star state! 

--Erin

We’re on our way!!

We have finally finished packing the RV.  I am amazed with how much space is available.  There is so much extra space in the back that maybe we might buy an Amish couch to bring back home. Just kidding!

Brayden and Riley are excited to start our trip.

Here is the RV all ready to start it’s first real trip.

Brayden and Riley in front of the RV with me.

First stop:  Somewhere for lunch!!

We should be heading off to Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico after we finish with lunch.

Picking up the RV

I went to the appointment at 4pm to pick up the RV.  They had me watch a 20 minute video about the details of the RV.  I was out the door around 5pm. 

I found out that this RV only has 2,000 miles on it.  We are the first renters of this vehicle.   :)   Hopefully, I don’t damage any of it during our trip.  I think I will be nervous about my driving during the entire vacation.

We have started putting some of our stuff in it, but will continue to load the rest of everything tomorrow morning.  Brayden and Riley will still go to school for the morning, but we plan on leaving around 12:30pm.

Here are some pics of the newly picked up RV:

Final Preparations

Over a month ago, I had created a list of things to do and things to bring on our vacation.  Especially over the last several days, we have had to review our list of things to do to make sure that everything gets done.  Ever since the list was created, Brayden and Riley have constantly sought out new things to add it.  The excitement in their eyes regarding adding to this list was amusing.  Several times a week, they would come up to me and ask if they could add to the list.  The item they wanted to add was some toy that they had not played with for a long time.  It now seems that they want to bring the entire inventory of our toys (which obviously is not going to happen).  We’ll have to see which toys they actually want to bring when are close to leaving.

Since we are leaving for an extended period, we have had to try to eat as much food as possible from the refrigerator and the freezer.  This ended up being an interesting situation where we created various concoctions for some meals.

Everything regarding the house is also taken care of.  We have awesome neighbors that offered to watch over our house and cut our grass for the 5 weeks that we are gone.  Thanks!!

Unfortunately, it feels like my last day at Intel.  In some regards, it probably always feels like this when someone goes on sabbatical.  My situation may be a little different.  My group has decided to move all of us from the 3rd floor to the 4th floor.  This is scheduled to happen while I am on my sabbatical. :(  So, I have had to pack all my stuff into boxes that will sit in my current cube until they move everything.  At that point, the boxes will remain until I get back.  Very sad indeed.

 

On a positive note, I called up Cruise America to see when I would be able to come and pick up the RV tomorrow.  They told me that it is currently ready and that I can pick it up TODAY.  I am scheduled to pick it up at 4pm today.  I will probably have another update later tonight with some pictures. :)

Upcoming Sabbatical and vacation

Ever since I started my Master’s degree program at ASU, Erin and I have had an eye on when I would be able to take my Intel Sabbatical (8 weeks of paid leave).

We had decided to delay my sabbatical by 2 years in order to avoid going on a long vacation while having to do homework and study for tests, etc.  Since my educational pursuits are finished, we are now able to enjoy some of the 8 weeks off.

Around late 2009, we tried to determine what kind of vacation we would want to take.  We thought about renting an RV for about 2-3 weeks or so with all 3 boys, and then a separate trip to Hawaii for both Erin and I.  We ended up changing our Hawaii plans to be a smaller San Diego vacation for Erin and I due to our enlarged RV trip plans. 

We initially thought about doing a one-way RV rental from Jacksonville, Florida all the way to Phoenix, Arizona.  When we found that the rental would cost an additional $750, plus airfare to get to Jacksonville, we went back to the vacation drawing board.  We didn’t necessarily like the added limitation that a cross-country flight would place on the types and amount of luggage we could take. 

We decided that for the money that would have been spent on the one-way rental fee and the flight to Jacksonville, we would add 1 week to our original plan of 3 weeks.  We figured that this would give us some time to enjoy the journey as we traveled to the East Coast.  As we considered our vacation path, we found that the number of stops that we wanted to make would be very difficult to do in 4 weeks.  Thus, we decided to make our trip last for 5 weeks.  We wouldn’t necessarily be spending any more on miles or gas, but only for extending the RV rental.

Another perk of renting an RV directly from Phoenix is that we can pack anything that we want to without having to worry about restrictions from an airline.  Plus, we had noticed that the Mesa office of Cruise America had started rolling out a new Intermediate RV (27 ft.).  It was more suitable for our family and we liked the floorplan better than the other 25 ft. RV.  The fact that it was brand new was also quite appealing.

Below is our proposed vacation path.  We are guessing it will be about 6,000 miles of driving.  Should be fun; regardless, it will be an adventure. :)

ASU Graduation

Well, I think it’s about time that I start a blog.  What better way to start than to state that I am finally finished with my 3 year pursuit of a dual-Masters degree program at Arizona State University.    It’s been a long process, but I am finally finished and I can now enjoy a little more “free time”, if that’s even possible.:)

Here is a picture of Erin and I right after the ASU Graduation.