Just me and the girls

Emily's cheer team had a competition on Saturday in San Jose. I have a friend who lives there who has a daughter Caliana's age, so I thought, "hey, maybe they'd like to come out to the competition, I'll bring Cal and the little girls could play together, awwww.
So, on top of getting Emily ready, I also had to get a cranky, sleepy 2 year old ready, make sure I had enough diapers, wipes, change of clothes, strait jacket, and prozac to make it through the day.
The drive down was pretty good. We grabbed a delicious, nutritious breakfast from McDonald's and Cali was pretty impressed by the Richmond bridge. She kept asking for "nother bidge peese"
Oh sure, forget the competition let's just drive over bridges all day, we could do a circle......Richmond bridge, bay bridge, golden gate bridge, repeat. If we go in a clockwise direction we could even avoid most of the tolls. And driving through Oakland and San Francisco all day won't make me want to drive right off any of those bridges either.
Since my GPS came up missing a few months ago, I had to rely on paper directions to find our way. We were 2 turns from our destination and only 2 minutes late when we encountered.......wait for it........a damn detour. No going straight, you must turn, you must navigate a strange city with one way streets and try to find your way to somewhere you've never been, hahahaha! Luckily I'm brilliant and it didn't take us too long to get back on track.
After we parked, we went through the door that led to the "convention center". It was huge, and there were lots of cheeleaders running around, so since I didn't want to walk for miles and miles with a 2 year old and all our crap, I made my way to the map. As I was staring stupidly at it, a nice man came up and said "go down the hall, go outside and turn right, it's 2 buildings over"
And wasn't he just so correct. He probably saved me at least a mile of walking that day. Thanks strange nice man!
The competition was fun, and exhausting. I had Emily to chase Cali (for awhile at least), and she loved showing her off to her team and coaches. Caliana has her own little cheer that she performed at least 3 times. Everyone just loved her. My friend and her daughter came, after they got lost too. The girls pretty much ignored each other, but were pretty good, thanks to fruit by the foot, granola bars, an apple, a giant pretzel and a gatorade (okay, that was mostly Cali, and most of it ended up with a couple bites out of it before she tossed it on the nasty floor. All except the fruit by the foot. She ate every morsel of that, licked the wrapper and begged for more.
After Emily performed and our friends had to go, I got Cali to sit still on my lap by promising to take her to Applebees when we were done. She absolutely adores Applebees. I'm pretty sure it's a combination of her love for apples, mac n cheese, ice cream sundaes and carousel horses.
So she sat quietly and fell asleep for the next 2 1/2 hours. My back was killing me and my butt was numb, but I was grateful for the reprieve.
30 years later, it was finally time for awards, and Cali woke up in time to cheer with the rest of us when Emily's team won first place!! Emily jumped up and ran to grab the champion banner, she was so stoked. Her coach totally cried, it was adorable.
We were all totally refreshed and elated when it was time to go back to the car. We took a different way back into the garage and that was our second mistake. Our first was not paying attention to which section we parked in in the first place. We walked from one end of that garage to the other, and back again, and again. I was not feeling quite as elated at this point, what with being a pack mule carrying Caliana, my purse, my diaper bag, Emily's jacket, and an assortment of souvenir prizes that Emily got. Add that to the fact that I had no idea where my fucking car was and I was getting cranky quick. We went back to the building where we started and backtracked, and eventually found the car, on a completely different level than the one we made laps around.
Now I just had to find an Applebees. Lucky for us we passed one on the freeway about 10 miles down the road. My sweet baby monkey ran around the restaurant like a tiny little psycho checking out the horses and chatting with a little boy at another table. She ran back to me excitedly screaming "MY TOLD MY BOY MY NAME COW-E-ON-UH"
Emily kept exclaiming how nice everyone was and made sure I left the waitress a tip (of course I did).
About halfway home Cal had had enough of sitting in the car and started to tell us about it, quite loudly. Thank goodness for Emily. She read to her and engaged her in learning her alphabet with a fun little song we got from Leap's Letter Factory (great movie if you have a toddler or preschooler, you should totally get it).
It sings a little song to the tune of the farmer in the dell.

The A says aah
The A says aah
Every letter makes a sound
The A says


Cali: "AHHH!"

She ate it right up. She may not know it yet, but she's lucky to have Emily for a big sister.

We arrived home 11 long hours after we left and my boys presented me with my Valentines present.
This is a picture of a picture, but you get the idea.




Emily has a competition in Fresno next Saturday. That's twice as far as San Jose. She wants to know if we could please bring Cali to that one too. Uhhhh......