Day THREE

Day three of our California trip was on a Sunday. Aaah, a day of rest. Sort of. As much as you can rest on a vacation.

The day started with Sacrament meeting at 9:00 am. This was the main reason we came down to California- to hear Bob and Wendy speak. The meeting was beautiful and they both did superb. I especially loved having Jacob sit with us in Sacrament meeting- that hasn't happened in over 2 months! Which is good, Ty only lasted so long before I had to make an exit with the little squirmer and Jacob could stay with the girls.

I have never taken the time to stop and really think about what a sacrifice it is for an adult couple to go on a mission. Especially a mission for 23 months. They love their grandkids dearly and are very close with them, so leaving them was a big deal. Bob has a successful business that he is trusting is being left in good hands. They are heading to a third world country that is plagued with poverty and crime, and lacks many (if not most) of the conveniences we take for granted daily. But to hear them speak of their resolve to serve, and of their faith in what they are doing and especially who they are serving, was so inspiring. After the meeting, they immediately were set apart as official missionaries! What a great experience to be part of.

Some good friends of theirs were hosting an open house for them later that afternoon, so for our in-between time, we went over to AnnMarie's (Wendy's daughter) house for a bit and let Ty take a snooze. Oh the joys of working around naps. But, it's best to let him get some sleep rather than suffer the consequences.

Oh, I've forgotten to mention the absolute star of the whole trip: our good friend Nueva. AKA the GPS. I have no idea how her name evolved, but somewhere along the line Jacob has named our GPS Nueva. Perhaps it's so named because of the friendly lady who so accurately takes us to where we're going. Random, I know. To make me feel somewhat normal, I'm just going to assume that most families come up with their own silly little querks, and Nueva is one (of the many) of ours. If it weren't for her, we would have been absolutely lost in California. It was so nice to just enter in an address and go right to it. LOVED it. She saved us oodles of time and stress.

So, thanks to our trusty Nueva, we made our way across town to the open house. It was so fun to watch Bob and Wendy interact with all their friends. It is obvious they are well loved and will be dearly missed. I always love sitting back and watching people. I try to take little lessons on how to interact with people.

The house we were at was beautiful, but the back "yard" was breathtaking. "Yard" is in quotes because the word eludes to an area having grass. Instead of grass, you look out to see this on the left:


And this to the right:


And the patio:


Oh, it was beautiful. It was so fun to sit and relax and enjoy the view. The girls of course were enamored with the hot tub that was out there. They stood on the edge of it looking into the water that was just calling to them.



Little by little they got closer and closer until finally they just couldn't stand it anymore and put their feet in. Couple of cute little ladies, don'tcha think?


Jacob trying his best to occupy Ty man and keep him out of trouble:


On the right is Bob and Wendy. They are with Wendy's daughter, AnnMarie, her husband, Adam, and their kids. We had so much fun with them.


And of course our family with Bob and Wendy:


Jacob and Bob:

It soon came time for us to bid farewell and head on over to start the last leg of our trip: DISNEYLAND! Yay! We simply typed "the happiest place on earth" into Nueva and within a half hour we were at our hotel. It was AWESOME to say the least.

The highlight of our entrance into our room was of course the bunkbeds for the girls. They immediately had to climb up and scope out their new territory for the next 3 nights:


The room had a spectacular view which looked right out onto the California Adventure Park. The red-and-white checkered building is the Soaring Over California ride, and the tower in the back center is the Tower of Terror ride.


We had a little table and chairs out there that of course the girls instantly wanted to climb up on so they could see out. Needless to say this made me beyond nervous and they soon learned that they could NOT climb up and hang over the banister or mom would pretty much freak out. Here's Allie scoping out the view:

The slight bummer of the night was that we were scheduled to have what's called a "character call" where Buzz and Woody were supposed to call them up and welcome them to Disneyland, but for whatever reason the call failed. Boo. Oh well, the girls never knew about it so couldn't be disappointed it didn't happen.

Since we didn't have tickets to the parks until Monday, we just spent the evening relaxing and checking out the area. We of course made our way out to Downtown Disney which is right outside the parks and it was fun to get a little taste of what was to come. Especially a little taste of how expensive everything is in the land of Disney. Jacob is still reeling over the fact that he paid over $12 for 3 ice cream cones. Guess that's what you get when you buy ice cream on Sunday. However, I'm pretty sure it was just as expensive on Monday. But, it's hard to escape the Israelsen ice cream gene. It's dominance puts ice cream more of a necessity rather than a want. The girls have obviously inherited it.


Then it was back to our room to rest up for Disneyland Day 1.

Stay tuned!

Cali Day 2

Our Day Two in California was Saturday. A perfect day to go to the beach!

We started off the morning by getting breakfast with Bob at Ruby's Diner, which is a fun little 50's diner-looking restaurant. After breakfast he loaded us up with towels and beach toys and drove us over to Seal Beach to....well...go to the beach. Seal Beach is a little town right next to Huntington Beach. They are all close to.....the beach. Go figure.

We found a place to park, headed to the bathrooms to change, lathered on the sunscreen, packed up our beach gear and trotted off in the sand to find a spot to play.

Ahh, yes, this will do. Love your umbrella my little beach babe!


Let the fun begin! Kenna was absolutely enthralled to find her own seashells. Unfortunately they weren't much to shout about, but it was better than anything she gets in our neck of the woods.


And Allie of course was just happy to play in the sand. I love this picture.


Ty also loved the sand, but it wasn't long until every square inch of his body was absolutely covered in it. Sunscreen and sand don't mix well. He may have even tried a bite or two of sand, so even his mouth was covered.



What can we create in the sand?


Hey, dad has an idea. How 'bout we bury Allie? Ya!



Allie loved it. We gave it a try with Kenna, but she didn't seem to appreciate near as much. So then we decided to give these little buddies a try:


They don't look especially daunting, but they were the perfect waves to play in and definitely packed a bit of a punch. The girls and I would go out in the water until it was up to their bellies and then wait for a wave. As soon as the wave was about to plow them over I yelled, "JUMP!" then they would jump up and I lifted them up out of the water. We just giggled and loved it over and over.

The sand and sun and water really take it out of you, and about an hour and a half later, the kiddos were pretty well maxed out. Ty had a blowout in his swim diaper and was getting really tired, and the girls were feeling it too. So we packed it all back up again and carefully placed our wet sandy bodies in the truck to head back to the hotel and de-sand.

The plan for the afternoon was to get back together with the grandkids, Bob and Wendy, and Emily (one of Bob's daughters) and rent what's called a Duffey (sp?) boat to head out on the water a bit. It sounded SO fun, but Ty was absolutely exhausted and taking him without a nap would have proven disastrous. It was about this point in the trip that Ty was starting to wear down. So I stayed back at the hotel while Ty slept and Jacob and the girls headed out for a little cruise. It looks like they had a great time.




When they came back, Ty was still sleeping! At least he got in a good snooze. We then loaded back up again to go meet the big group again for dinner at Don Ramon's Mexican Restaurant. Ty must not have gotten his full beauty sleep because he was a wiggly, loud little critter and made an absolute mess around his high chair. But, we all got full, laughed a bit, and headed over to AnnMarie's house for some dessert. We chatted and laughed for a bit, the kids played, then we made our way back to the hotel for another good sleep. Needless to say, we were all feeling the tired.

Hooray for a pack-n-play! Poor Ty, always confined.


Okay, come on out for one last snuggle with your sisters.


NOW we can go to sleep!

Californ-I-A

At the rate I'm going, a year will have passed before I blog about our vacation. I need to get a move on! I'm going to have to break it up or it will be a marathon post. I have tons of pictures, and of course the majority of them just have to go on the post.

Let's start off with day ONE (well, and the night before our official first day):

Since we had a 7 hour drive, we decided to break up the first leg a bit and stay the night in Barstow. All went well until we walked into the restaurant to get some dinner and Jacob had to hurry and rush out before he lost his cookies. Yep, Jacob got sick our first night. The girls and Ty had some sort of a 24 hour bug earlier in the week and they ended up sharing the love. THANK HEAVENS the kiddos were mostly over it. The exception was Ty man who still had some pretty loose blow-outs in his diaper, but he was acting just fine. So we took Jacob and Ty back to the hotel (it was fortunately late enough and Ty was ready for bed) and then the girls and I enjoyed a rousing evening at the local....drumroll please....McDonald's. Followed up by a trip to the local WalMart to get some medicine for the sick and afflicted. Little note to self: the Barstow McDonald's and WalMart aren't exactly places I care to frequent. Especially with small children. Oy!

At least we all slept well and got up the next morning ready to OFFICIALLY start our vacation. And fortune smiled upon us as Jacob was slowly feeling better by the hour.

Are you ready to come out of your cage, Ty? Dear hotel, thank you for the accommodation.



The girls are ready to go play!


Kenna and Allie just loved the sliding doors to the closet in the hotel room. Kenna called it the "elevator" and was having a blast pretending to go to different places in it. Before we left, she and Allie hopped in, closed the doors, and came down to the right floor so we could go.



And of course the first of many lift-out-your-arm-as-far-as-you-can-to-take-a-self-portrait pictures. Many attempts didn't get too much more out of Kenna who thought she was absolutely hilarious and loved to look at the different faces she would pull.


See ya later cockroaches, we are off!


Seatbelts...check. Movie started...check. Ty has his blanket...check.


This is CLASSIC Ty. He absolutely loves his blankets. Not just any blanket, however. It has to be a blanket with a tag on it. I have no idea where this came from, but he finds the tag on the blanket and holds it up to his nose. It's not complete, however, until he has two fingers from his left hand in his mouth. Always the same fingers, same hand.


Fingers:


And the tag:


Now we're all set! "Ooooh," I said. "Look at that handsome fella driving out on those wild California roads!" Of course I had to take a picture. Jacob LOVES it when I do this. Loves it.


Then he said it was only fair if I took one of myself too. Ah, what the heck, we're on vacation. Smile Britt!


It only took less than two hours and we were at our destination: Huntington Beach, California. Aaah, we could smell that fresh, humid sea air. Huntington Beach was a pretty area. Here we are waiting to meet up with our friends, Bob and Wendy. They are a couple who live in California, but have a ranch just down the street from us a bit that we help take care of. In a crazy twist of events, we have come to know them very well over the past few years and they have become good friends. They are leaving on a humanitarian mission to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (how cool is that?!), so we came down to hear them speak in Sacrament and make a California vacation out of it.

We drove over to Wendy's daughter, AnnMarie's house and met up with the grandkids. From there, Jacob and Bob decided to go do some manly stuff which included taking a stroll in Bob's beautifully restored 1937 Ford hot rod. Jacob even got a chance to get behind the wheel for a bit. He loved it! I was so sad we never got a picture of it. The kids and I followed AnnMarie and her 4 kids to an Aquarium in Long Beach. The 30 minute drive was beautiful, and it was so fun to catch glimpses of the ocean on the way.

The Aquarium was awesome and we saw some really cool creatures. Walking up to start our aquarium adventure:



Kenna really wanted to see some sharks, and was so happy to find this exhibit:


She was slightly upset they didn't have the really BIG sharks (yikes!), but they got to touch some of the smaller ones.




These are big enough for me! They were also in with some huge rays of some type.






What do you think Ty? Will you remember any of this? Will you remember that you and the stroller had some quality bonding time on this trip?


They also got to touch some starfish, anemones, and some ugly gooey giant sea slug-type thing that Allie was really fascinated with. I just decided to be the cheerleader and keep my hands out of the water.



We saw some really big jellyfish:


And got to touch the little safe jellyfish. I am proud to say I finally decided to reach in and touch the jellyfish too.


Don't forget the really big crabs. Anyone bring the melted butter and fresh lemon?


They had giant tanks full of different kinds of fish. In some of the tanks, scuba divers who are hooked up to a microphone dive into the tank and do a little interactive show for the audience. It was really neat. Ty loved being in a place where he could get out of the stroller for a bit and crawl around.

We also got to see seahorses, shark eggs, coral, seals and sea lions, and whatever else I've forgotten. After we saw all the interesting sea creatures we could handle for the afternoon, we all headed back to Huntington Beach and met up at Chuck-E-Cheese for dinner. Oh my was it ever a HIT! The girls absolutely loved it. It really is a perfect set up. The entrance and exit are both monitored, and kids can't leave without matching hand stamps with their parents. So, the girls loved the freedom of running around to the different games and just stopping in every so often to get more coins.




Kenna especially fell in love with a little booth where it takes a black and white picture of you sitting in a little car next to a statue of Chuck-E-Cheese. She kept trying to come up with different faces she could pull at the camera, then would run back to us giggling and show us the picture. We ended up with quite a few of them!

Let us not forget little Ty who was able to get some more crawl time in. On the gross dirty carpet of Chuck-E-Cheese. Sigh. Who needs to walk when you can crawl in all the filth, really? Someday our little munch will start to walk. Someday.



Then, off to the hotel to get some sleep for day two of vacation.