The Future Has Arrived!!!

From Tesla to Tomorrowland: The Future Has Arrived!

No matter how old I get, every Christmas Eve, I go to bed with the same butterflies in the pit of my stomach. Even if I know what all my presents will be, there’s still that moment of anticipation, of knowing that one of the most special days of the year is about to arrive, and it’s ALMOST HERE. And then, on Christmas morning, there’s this almost surreal realization that it’s here, it’s morning, and that much-anticipated tomorrow has arrived. Is it weird that I feel the same way right now?

The future truly has arrived! The Tesla Model X that drives itself!

We started out this week with a silent glide forward into the future in the Tesla Model X, their SUV model. I could write about it till the cows come home (or we do) and I still couldn’t say enough about it. We certainly talked the ears off of everyone in both our families all week long. I had the song “The Future Has Arrived” in my head the entire time we drove it. It drives itself, has free supercharging stations all over the country, and accelerates so fast you can’t reach the dashboard if I’ve got my foot on the gas. Plus the Delorean-style automatic doors, the self-parking and self-parallel parking features…. Anyone want to donate a hundred thousand or so? :D

Anyway. Let’s get back on track. We had an amazing week, at the zoo, (there was a cheetah on a LEASH following its dog buddy!) the beach (it wasn’t warm enough for the water so we built an AWESOME moat for a castle that never quite made it to reality), and Disneyland, where Tyler was sad because Space Mountain was closed, but *I* had lots of fun and dragged him along with me to the castle and Tomorrowland and we went in a SPACESHIP!!!! And we had an awesome jungle cruise with a guide who had more corny jokes than a bag of Laffy Taffys. We finished off the week with a visit to the San Diego temple, which I decided is definitely more castle-like in some ways than the Sleeping Beauty castle, which felt more like a play set. Then the Balboa Park butterfly gardens and lunch at Mod Pizza for some classic American pizza before we headed home to seriously pack up.

Here it is... This is all that we are taking with us for 13 weeks in South America!

Two emotional breakdowns, one unnecessary trip to the store for things we thought we needed, LOTS of tissues for Tyler’s head cold, and several goodbyes later, here we are at LAX where, unfortunately, they don’t believe in mailboxes to send things home. Looks like our cell phones are coming with us as glorified service-less iPods, to be mailed home at a later date. (Also to the McFarland clan, sorry, we had to dump last year’s stocking stuffers that we never gave you. They wouldn’t have made it through security.)

The plane starts boarding in a few minutes. Is it too late to run home and get one more taste of everything American??? I’ll take a Frosty, a Slurpee, more Mod Pizza, our nice comfy bed, and about two dozen showers in clean water….As we embark on this new adventure, goodbye to everything we knew, and hello to everything we haven’t learned yet. Goodbye USA, saludos a Ecuador!

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