trip to texas

sorry it has been awhile. getting ready to go to texas, going there, and then getting back to lots of construction in our house has made life a bit crazy. and the biggest bummer is that our camera is not working and so i have about 5 pictures of the kids on the plane and that's it. hopefully my cousin and aunt susu will be able to send me pics of our trip that i can download on the blog.
we were really curious as to how the kids would do on the plane. and in the airport. and how we would be able to manage all of them and the luggage. for whatever reason, we never like to check bags. and even though we have 3 children now, we still didn't want to check bags. so mommy packed all of us very lightly. on the trip out we had stephen redden with us so everything went fine. he carried some stuff and sat with us. frontier gave us the whole second to last row on the plane. and noone was behind us. townsend sat in his carseat and was quiet as a churchmouse. he watched some videos or looked out the window. ellory was almost as good. as we were waiting to pull out of the gate she got a little antsy with her seatbelt and kept unbuckling it. when we told her to keep it closed she started crying. loudly. but she really was great for the most part. little marin was the fussy one. she just doesn't like being confined. we had her in a carseat and she just whined and fussed. i kept putting "goldfish" in her mouth but she eventually got full and even that didn't help. so i walked her up and down the cabin. fortunately the flight was less than 2 hours.
once we got to austin grandpa steinke and aunt susu were at the airport with our rented van. we headed to karen and scott's house for a little bbq with some old friends. it was great to see everyone although i didn't have time to get any long conversations in. so many friends now have children and it was fun to see them too. there was a big trampoline which townsend and ellory LOVED. even after both of them fell through the springs. still wanted back on. marin fell asleep in a baby swing hanging from a tree limb. the kids would come and twirl her around and she just stayed asleep. wish i had a pic to show. blasted camera. the kids and i left headed to georgetown later that evening. even though it was past their bedtime they weren't too tired and it actually took them awhile to fall alseep. they were all in one room. not the best sleep environment we found out.