Spring Break in California!

Yes, we decided to go for Spring Break to sunny California...well, sort of sunny.  Can't complain much though since it was raining and snowing back home the entire week!  So here's a scrapbook of the trip.  We left on Friday, April 1st and came back on Saturday the 10th.  Since gas has been jumping up in price almost daily we decided it would be cost efficient to rent...a minivan.  Honestly, it wasn't as bad as I thought.  In fact, I enjoyed the sweet ride quite a bit and surprisingly it has been missed by the whole fam since we took it back.  The satellite radio was awesome-I need some of that.  We passed the long journey by listening to a book on CD-"The Hunger Games".  It pretty much captured everyone's attention (except Kate) the entire time.  We made it to Cedar City on Friday night and met up with Jeanne and Danny who happened to be hanging out in St. George that week.  We stayed in the Crystal Inn (yeah, kind of a dive), ate breakfast the next morning and started heading for Las Vegas!  We were even lucky enough to catch the morning session of conference on the radio as we were approaching Vegas.  So here you are at our first stop in Vegas:  The Gold and Silver Pawn shop which is featured on "Pawn Stars" on the History channel on cable that my boys love to watch.  Unfortunately, since it was Saturday the people that run the place that we wanted to meet weren't working (only Mon through Fri).  It was still a cool place to browse. 

I think Liam was dying of starvation at this point.  Chloe seems fine though.

So we arrived in California on Saturday night.  Our first stop was seeing Dad and Mom but Dad had already left for the Priesthood session of conference at the stake center.  He met all of us at Buffalo Inn later on.  Clayton's friend from camp, Zach who lives in Fontana, met us there as well.  Sunday rolled around and Heather was feeling pretty sick.  We watched the morning session of conference at Dad and Mom's then cruised up to Mount Baldy to spend the afternoon with Grandma.  We watched the afternoon session there and had a great dinner together.  By the end of the night, Heather was starting to feel a little better.  The kids were stressing out a little bit since they wanted Heather to be able to come to Disneyland so bad the next day, which brings us to the next pictures.

Here we are at the "happiest place on Earth".

Kate was determined to meet "Minnie" and so she did.

The Lego store-where Liam would like to be buried someday.  Not sure who the random kid in the middle is here.

It turned out to be about a 14 hour day though after all was said and done. Eli was complaining that he couldn't walk anymore by the end of the night and that he felt like his legs were going to fall off.  We had to pace ourselves because we knew we were coming back to California Adventure on Friday. 

On our way to Eric and Jenny's house-the girls were dressing for the occasion

hangin out on the patio

I still haven't got over how awesome their backyard is.  Pool, party patio, privacy...what else does one need?

Kate having fun

Next thing we knew we were off to San Diego for the next few days.  It became a tad bit stormy but we didn't mind too much.  We stayed at the Sheraton right in the bay-it was pretty cool.  Dad and Mom joined us for the night and next day which was fun.

I was told by a co-worker that we needed to go check out the newly renovated "Mormon Batallion Museum" in Old Town.  It was way cool.  We had a short presentation where we actually felt like part of the family of pioneers who treked so far and had the men called out to become soldiers to fight in Mexico.

We were able to pan for gold

Ever seen the movie "Big"?  This fortune teller is similar to the one used in the film.

easy does it Kate...

Here we are on Coronado Island-it didn't take long for Kate to be entertained...

even though it was a bit chilly, it was still nice to relax and the view was gorgeous

The kids had a blast playing on the rocks and checking out the tide pools:

surprisingly the kids pretty much ran right into the frigid waters

this is quite funny...and random.  We were walking out to the beach and a girl said: "Eli?"  Turns out that one of Eli's good friends happened to be at the same beach for Spring Break too.  Crazy.

We were totally craving pizza after we left the beach and found this great place just down the street.  Let me just say that I'm a big fan of "Happy Hour" specials.  We were able to get a huge appetizer plate of meats, cheeses and bread for $5 and huge slices of whatever kind of pizza you liked...for $2 each.  Awesome.

We decided to hit up the Birch-Scripps Aquarium in La Jolla-it was really cool.  We watched a fish feeding frenzy show that was cool.  There was a huge sea bass that was about the size of a piano.

Yikes!

We just had to stop and see the San Diego temple-so beautiful.  We chatted with the sister missionaries for a while and met one from Fruit Heights...small world.

Oh baby we were kinda anxious to head back to California Adventure on Friday.  Here's a shot of the green army guys from Toy Story that was going on.  Too cool.

Whuzzup Sully?

Seriously the coolest ride in my book: The Hollywood Tower of Terror.  I LOVE the Twilight Zone and so do my kids and we talked about this ride the whole trip leading up to this day and keep talking about it to this day-so much fun.  Kind of a crappy picture but I took a picture of the monitor that was showing our group with my camera.  Hahahahahaha

We decided to head home on Saturday and have a day back home to unwind before the kids were heading back to school on Monday.  The ride home was long and in the middle of Utah we passed through a couple of storms that forced us to slow down to nearly 5 mph.  We finished up the book on CD (Hunger Games) and again my advice to any road traveling family-get a great book on CD, it was awesome.  We had a ton of fun at mom and dad's house.  We all miss waking up in the morning there and enjoying the delicious breakfast that mom laid out and prepared...yum!  We were excited to see Martha but with both Heather and I being sick we didn't risk it. Looking forward to the next trip.