California

Wow has it really already been nearly a month since I last blogged?! I knew I was slacking, but not this bad! I suppose I will start with our California vacation, which went a little something like this…..


The night of Friday June 25th, I packed up the car and situated car seats so we would be ready to rock and roll. I went to bed about 1130 pm, I was preceded by everyone else by a couple hours with the exception of Brooke and Tayler who went to sleep around the same time as I did.

We woke up at 230 am on Saturday, loaded everyone up and were on the road for San Diego at about 3 am. Our plan was to drive the 7 hour and 45 minute journey while the kids slept, we figured it would save a lot of headache…and it did! It took everyone about an hour to get comfy and fall back to sleep, but then they all slept until around 830 when we stopped for breakfast.

We made it to our hotel at noon, thank goodness for tom-tom, Brooke’s little GPS device…that really saved our lives! J We were able to get an early check in after we went and did a little shopping. Once we were all unpacked and freshened up we decided to head down to the Seaport Village and check out the naval ships and other sites. Everyone was pretty tired, but we did a little swimming in the pool and went to bed, so far our trip was going smoothly!

Sunday was our day for Sea World. Sea World is a lot of fun, it’s nice because there isn’t really any standing and waiting in line which helps with little kids patience and I supposed even us big kids! We watched Shamu, sea lions, dolphins in the Blue Horizon show, Pets Rule show and I’m probably forgetting a show or two. Matt, Brooke, Tyler and Kylie rode the “Journey to Atlantis” ride and got drenched! I was supposed to go, but Karissa was not happy about me going so Matt traded with me and I have to say after seeing how soaked they were, I wasn’t too disappointed! The kids got to feed and pet Bat Rays, feed sea lions, and look at all sorts of other marine mammals. My least favorite part of Sea World was the $8.00 pieces of pizza I bought for lunch…gag! Matt and I got to go out that night and enjoy a delicious dinner at a place called Phil’s BBQ. I just LOVE BBQ and well Matt loved that we were on some live web cam while waitin gin line and so he was putting on a show! The end of Sunday and our trip was still going pretty good!!

Monday was our designated day for the beach so of course you know the weather wasn’t going to cooperate. It was chilly, misting rain and overcast! We decided since we were going to head to Anaheim that evening we might just head north a little earlier and look for a beach. We wound up going to Newport Beach which was a great beach! However, the weather was only slightly better, but we were going to make the best of it. We had to rummage up as much silver change as possible for the parking meter because you know here in Heber we don’t typically have to use those so it slipped our mind LOL! We packed our lunch for the beach and set off for a good few hours at least. The water was a tad chilly at first, but then it warmed right up! We were all having a good time…until, yes until….we notice the lifeguard rescue boat zooming over to a group of people out in the water a little ways. We then notice that Brooke and Tayler are in that group…yep we sat there in astonishment as we watched a lifeguard jump off the boat and pluck our Brooke and Tayler out of the water along with several other people! We could tell they were standing and moving so appeared to be ok, so we were confused as to what had happened! We watched until the lifeguard then jumped off the boat with Brooke and Tayler and swam in with them. Well, long story short, they got caught in a riptide, I guess really Brooke did more than anything and Tayler was doing her best to help. Pretty scary for them, thankfully all were ok, but it kinda made our so far smooth trip get a little bumpy. Needless to say, they didn’t go back into the water! It was sand castle time and bury the kids time for them. We went to our hotel and swam some more because apparently everyone felt a little safer in the 5 foot deep pool! After we all showered, we grabbed some pizza for dinner and hit the hay; we had an early morning coming up!

Tuesday morning we said hello to the Magical world of Disney! The kids had anticipated Disney for what seemed like eternity to them and it was finally here. We tried to be to the gates right as they opened, but we missed it by about 45 minutes only because finding your way into the parking area for the theme park is a total nightmare! The weather started out cool and overcast which helped with the crowds a bit. We started at Space Mountain where they told us Karissa was not tall enough; we tried to dispute this because she was seriously like a hair short! Matt waited with her, Kennedy and Kylie while the rest of us hopped on Space Mountain. We rode Big Thunder Mountain, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan’s Flight, Splash Mountain, Astro Orbiter, Winnie the Pooh, met the Princesses, Minnie and Mickey, and rode numerous other rides. We went on everything that everyone wanted to do and by nights end, we were ALL ready to go home! We started to watch the fireworks display, but decided to head towards Main Street and the tram asap to beat what crowds we could. We were making decent progress, but by the time we hit the turnstyles Matt and Brooke who were behind Tayler and I, were frantically informing us that Kylie was missing. My heart sunk to my stomach and I felt sick immediately. No one was sure when they saw her last or where she got separated. Brooke and Tayler stayed at the exit with the rest of the kids while Matt and I went back to search. How would we ever find her in the crowds of thousands, in the dark, would she think to stop, would she keep walking and searching for us? What if I never see her again? A surge of emotions flooded through me as my mind raced and could only think the worst! I headed straight to guest services and explained our situation which I imagined they had heard countless times before. As soon as I was through giving her description, they were contacting security and my phone rang. It was the baby care center in the park, they had our Kylie. I couldn’t get there fast enough, and I had no idea where there was! It turns out she got separated from us when we made a turn and she didn’t see us turn. She was thankfully smart enough to go to a Disney employee and ask for help. I cannot even describe how grateful I am that she was so smart!!! That was it…that was enough…I was ready to go home.

We really did have a wonderful time, the kids all behaved rather nicely, Brooke and Tayler didn’t even fight too much…kidding of course! It was a dream to have them along to help out. It really was a great family vacation aside from those couple mishaps that thankfully turned out ok!