Have baby will travel

Our trip started out with an already planned trip to Las Vegas for a hunting convention Neil's dad goes to every year.  We flew out of Billings Thursday night and went to our hotel, the New York New York. Friday we went to the convention and wandered around there all day.

Neil and his brother are both Giant's fans so when they won their conference championship, they jokingly said to eachother- lets go to the Super Bowl! Well, the joke ended up serious and we got tickets and added a little bonus trip onto our Vegas trip!

Saturday morning, we got up, ate breakfast, re-packed our bags to catch our flight to Indianapolis . We were supposed to fly out at 1:30 but when we got to the airport, they told us that our connecting flight in Dallas wasn't going to work. We would arrive in Dallas after the other flight already left. They switched airlines on us the plane we needed to catch left in 45 minutes. We ran to security which usually takes a while because Linda's faux knees set the metal detectors off. I had Locklyn in the sling and walked through and the security guy stopped me too. Linda and I both ended up getting patted down, which seemed like it took FOREVER! We got to our gate just as they were shutting the doors, thankfully  that plane was already running 10 minutes behind or we would've missed that flight too!!

We got re-routed to Atlanta so we flew in there, grabbed supper on the run and boarded our next plane to Indianapolis. We got our rental car and headed to our hotel, which was an hour out of Indy- it was the only one we could get!

We woke up early Sunday morning to head back into Indy as there was so much we wanted to see in a short amount of time. Indianpolis had converted the whole downtown area into Super Bowl Village. City blocks of Super Bowl fun and excitement. There was a zip line, huge ice sculptures, anything and everything you could think of! We wandered around there, then headed in to get to our seats

Headed to the game

 The gates opened at 2:30 and the game started at 6:30 so we watched the teams warm up and just soaked up the excitement of being at the Super Bowl.

The coin flip

 The Halftime Show was AMAZING! I was so shocked to see all the negative comments about it after the game. Madonna put on a great show and kept us watching and singing along the whole time!

MADONNA

 It was an awesome game, keeping us wondering who was going to win until the very last second. Thankfully, the Giants won so we had some happy travelers on the way home!

GIANTS WIN!!!

 Yes, we took Locklyn to the game, she had ear protection that consisted of cotton balls, burp rags and diapers! I would've rather not taken her, but we are kind of attached at the nipple for the next year or so! Kynlie stayed home with my parents, we had already planned on leaving her home for the Vegas trip so it worked out that she could just stay a day longer with mom & dad.

Locklyn's first Super Bowl! (probably her last too:)

 Locklyn was PERFECT the whole trip! I know a lot of people think we are crazy just for taking her to Vegas but besides feeding her every 3 hours and changing diapers, we didn't even notice she was there. This is the easiest time to travel with kids I think! She slept through the whole game, just waking up to eat once. She was wanting to wake up towards the end of the game so I just kept nursing her so she wouldn't wake up, then when it had quieted down a big, I let her wake up.

After the game, we headed to the car to go to our next hotel, this time in Indy, and this is where things got interesting! The hotel looked dumpy from the outside, but Neil went in and checked us in. We walked up to our room, and with every step, I grew more and more hesitant about staying there. First of all, it had a stench to it, an undescribable stench. The walls and floors in the hallway were filthy, wallpaper was peeling off the walls and they were splattered with nastiness everywhere you looked. We opened the door to the room, only to find more nastiness! There were cigarette butts on the floor, the smell intensified, light bulbs were missing, it honestly looked like something that should be rented by the hour! We talked it over and decided that none of us were comfortable staying there and definetly not with a 5 week old baby!

We packed all our stuff back to the van and went to check it back in at the car rental place and go to the airport. We didn't fly out until 10 am, but the floor at the airport was way more sanitary than anything in that nasty hotel. We breezed through security, being the only people at the airport at 3 am! They had shut down all flights through Indy during the game to prevent any 9-11 type of incidents.

Everyone dozed on and off throughout the day, then we finally boarded our plane from Indy to Boston, yes, Boston. Just a little backtracking. We had a short layover in Boston, then flew to Denver, then to Billings. We got into Billings at 8:30 pm, got our luggage and headed for the last leg of our terribly long trip! It was hard for any of us to stay awake to drive home, but we made it!

Really, the only enjoyable part of our trip was the Super Bowl, over half of our time was spent traveling and no quality time was spent in any one location! It is definetly a trip we will remember for the rest of our lives!