Instead

We had plans on New Year's Day to rake leaves, paint a couple things for our bathroom, vacuum, and so forth.
Instead, we did this:
We forgot to bring a hat for Cole, but since his sister was watching TinkerBell in the car with Selina, he was fine with this one.

We flew! How cool is that? Thank you Jeff, Liz, Selina, and Chloe for inviting us to join you for one last hurrah. We will miss having you so close by.

Tessa was afraid to let Selina touch the steering stick because she thought it would make the plane take off. She finally calmed down when we reassured her it wasn't going to happen. Cole would make the sign for plane and flying sounds, but he wanted no part in actually getting in it.

Jake was good enough to get a couple of videos of me in the plane. He was way more on top of capturing the moment than I was. Thanks, Jake.

What a fun adventure. Jacob and I both agreed that although we were initially scared at the idea of going up in a small plane, we weren't afraid once we got in the thing. We felt totally safe with Jeff as the pilot. He had each of us try steering the plane up in the air (the set up reminded me of driver's ed, where he still had control over the plane while we tried). I'll be honest --that's when I got nervous. All I could think of was the night before, playing Mario Bros. with them and my killing Mario within the first 7 seconds with my mad skills. I just wanted to enjoy the view, go fast, and do a couple stomach flipping dips --which, happily, we did.

After flying we went into downtown? Justin, Texas for lunch at "The Lonesome Spur". It looked exactly like you are imagining a place named that would look. They had the best onion rings I've ever had. One of the workers brought over half deflated helium balloons for the kids (from New Year's Eve?). The kids loved the dying things. Cole wouldn't touch his lunch after that and was prepared to dig the eye out of anyone who looked like they might take his balloon away.

As always, we had a fantastic time with the Ereksons. Thank you, again.