California

Summer is flying by! Sorry, nothing thoughtful to this post, just wanted to get some of my favorite pictures of our trip to California up. We spent 9 days on vacation with Dave's family doing the kid oriented San Diego & Anaheim attractions. It was a lot of fun and a lot of work. I think everyone was ready to be done the day we flew home. Let's begin:

The San Diego Zoo! Heath begged to use my camera at the zoo because his cousins Grace and Holden had their own cameras. So the majority of our pictures from the zoo are like this. (there are also a lot of blurry images that if you stare at long enough they start to look like animals.)

Luckily there were other cameras in the hands of adults who captured the love Charlie had for the zoo. He was a major fan of the elephants (in fact any elephant he saw the entire week, real or not, he was obsessed with!) It also took us a long time to pry him away from the lions. And I'm proud to report we only lost one child the entire trip and it was only for a couple of minutes. Charlie wandered back towards the polar bears because he wasn't ready to move on yet.

And of course, every time we finished up somewhere my kids passed out! They were even falling asleep in the restaurant at dinner one night. Here's Grace taking one for the team, she sat between Heath and Wade almost the whole trip. She is a saint!

LEGOLAND!!! While I will openly admit most of the rides were not worth the wait, Legoland was really cool. Wade's favorite ride of the whole trip was this super cheesy horse ride. Heath was so upset he had to wait for Wade to ride it, but he went on it because everyone else was going on it. He was trying so hard to look ticked off about it the whole ride, I could see him enjoying himself during parts of it, then he would see me and remember he was supposed to hate this ride because it's for babies. But Wade was beaming through it all!

Our favorite part of Legoland was by far all the miniatures. Although, not many of them are actually "mini"

And in a sad sort of way it was like taking my kids to a museum. They had so many questions about all the cities that were recreated. I got to explain about the monuments and had to teach them about 9/11 and the Twin Towers (which was weird to have to teach someone about that, it's hard to believe there are people who didn't live through that day. It made me think about when my parents would tell us about the Cuban Missile Crisis.)

And of course, the main reason we made the trip:

Awesome! Exhausting! Over stimulating! You name it, Disneyland covered it! The characters, the parades, the roller coasters, the fireworks...it's a good thing we took pictures because there was way too much to remember without them.

Don't worry, I won't tell you everything. We did three days there, and I think day two when we did California Adventure was probably our favorite. Even though it was sprinkling on us most of the morning it was fantastic! We got to see Disney Jr. Live, which Charlie and Wade loved and it was a nice break from the rain.

Another major check off the list happened that day too. We got to meet BUZZ LIGHTYEAR! I thought Charlie might explode while waiting in line. He went through every emotion a two year old has before it was actually our turn (and our wait was under 10 minutes.) He walked up to him in pure awe, and Buzz was so cool. He gave high fives and shook hands, he let Charlie try pushing his buttons. And of course the entire time Charlie just kept yelling in his super high pitched excited voice, "It's BUZZ LIGHTYEAR!"

All the kids but Charlie earned their Senior Wilderness Explorer Badge, but Russell gave Wade his. That was actually a really cool part of the park, with rope swings and rock climbing it really did have the feel of a mini scout camp.

And you may have seen the whole sequence on Facebook, but I loved taking our kids on the roller coasters! Their faces are priceless!!! We loved checking the pictures that was taken during the ride because between all the cousins, there were some winners every time! The kids loved it too, I woke up to get in the shower one morning and heard Wade talking in his sleep. "I wanna go! I'm tall enough..."

Here's Heath on his THIRD time through his "favorite ride." He's still freaked out during it.

And of course, where there are hotels (esp. in CA) there are swimming pools. There was lots of swimming. Which has paid off in swimming lessons this year. The boys aren't nearly as timid in the water, and I'd like to keep it that way.

That sums things up! Thanks for reading if you made it this far. It didn't make for a witty post but it did make for a fun week and a lot of memories! Thanks Mom & Dad Arnold for the good times!