After midnight on Saturday, I was still thinking of stuff to pack and things to do. It almost wasn’t worth trying to go to sleep, knowing that we’d be getting up in a few hours and leaving the house by 4:30 a.m. I rested, but I didn’t really sleep. We made it to the airport in plenty of time, though.

Our flight was pretty uneventful. We had a short hop to O’Hare, then our main flight to San Diego. I sat with the kids; Pete was a row away, sitting next to a Ukrainian man with a 17-month-old son. The child was very antsy. The dad tried to placate him with canned meat paste, but the boy insisted on shrieking and running into the first class section. I didn’t blame him one bit once I realized they’d been in the air for a day already. And I thought five hours was a long trip.

After we landed, we collected our bags quickly and took the shuttle to our hotel. We were early, so we checked our bags with the bellman and walked over to Hard Rock Cafe for lunch. Then we walked downtown for a few hours, which did not delight the children. We were tired, our feet hurt, and I suddenly realized we belonged at a resort and not in the Gaslight District no matter how historical and eclectic it may be.

Back at the hotel, we discovered our room still wasn’t ready. Fifteen minutes later: we went to our room. Five minutes after that: I stepped onto a soaking wet carpet in the bedroom of our suite. There had been a leak; the carpet had been cleaned. We moved to another room. At around 4 p.m. Pacific Time (6 p.m. our time) we all took a nap. For 14 hours.