Lonnie's left us!!

Well he did leave, but we'll see him again in 5 days. He has a TON of training to do in central California for work. One of the courses is 4 weeks long and he was supposed to complete it before he'd been at the probation office for a year (oops, that didn't happen). He also has an assortment of firearms trainings, defensive tactics training, and a number of things I can't remember. When all is said and done he will be gone for about 6 weeks. Stephen and I were hoping to go with him the whole time but in order to compromise with work I agreed to only take 4 weeks off which made it much easier for them to give me the part-time position that I now have. So Stephen and I will leave on Saturday morning and drive down to meet him in Willows which is north of Sacramento and then we'll caravan (is two cars a caravan?)to our hotel in Roseville which is about 15 miles from Sac. The people at the probation office aren't super "on-the-ball" about finding things and considering what a person might need for a whole month so I did all the research based on our needs since we'd have Stephen with us. I found a Residence Inn in Roseville which is 15 miles from where Lonnie's training is every day. We get a one-bedroom hotel room which makes it super convenient for Stephen to be in there while napping. We also have a "kitchen" that has a full sized refrigerator and a stove top. I'm bringing my crock pot and we'll get a toaster oven when we're down there to make our "kitchen" complete. I'm loading up all my books I want to read, photography stuff, stuff for Stephen, just about everything but the kitchen sink. I'm so happy we get to be together for most of the time Lonnie is down there. It would be really hard for all of us to be away from him for that long. I'm hoping to find a way to go to San Francisco while we're there to go and see "Wicked" but it depends on whether or not Lonnie's co-worker would mind watching him for the evening or if Lonnie's parents are going to come down. During our trip we also plan to drive down to Long Beach to see my older brother Tim and his wife Gina. We went down for their wedding when Stephen was a couple weeks old but didn't really get a chance to see and talk to them much. So we're hoping to use this chance that we are closer to see them and spend some time with them.