California Adventure

Traveling with a baby is sure an adventure no matter where you go! We wanted to take a family trip but decided this year we'd stay in the country since Emma is still pretty young. California was the obvious choice and we LOVED it! I took over 400 pictures so I'm going to limit what I put on this blog.

We left on a Friday and drove to Vegas (we found Emma does great for about 5 hours so we kept it at that). Garlan and Darek had a brother's afternoon while Amberli and I chatted and chased kids. Saturday morning we got up early and headed to Zuma Beach to meet up with B&J, B&C and E&R. We staked out the perfect beach spot with tents, canopies, coolers and chairs. The kids played in the sand and water for hours. I think they all buried each other at least once. The Dad's spent most of the time riding the waves with their boogie boards. The waves were huge and there were a lot of battle wounds in the end. The wives relaxed in the chairs and spent their time sipping on Diet Coke, counting kid's heads and laughing at those getting wasted on their boogie boards.

 After all day at the beach we gathered back at Jason & Brooke's to relax and just be together. Sunday we had a BBQ there and then people started to depart. G & I stayed till Tuesday morning with J&B cause on Monday they took us to Six Flags!!!!! It was so fun to spend a day at an amusement park together. In fact, Brooke ended up taking Emma with her little ones home and G & I got to spend 5 + hours with Jason going from ride to ride. We love Six Flags but even more we love spending more time with Jason and Brooke's cute family. Oh how we wish we all lived closer together!

 Emma ended up LOVING the merry-go-round. After a few times daddy got sick so we got off. haha

After we said our goodbye's to LA McCoy's (thank you for hosting us!) we headed south to my dear friend Amber's house just East of Laguna. We were in the same freshman ward together, went through the nursing program together, lived close to each other in Cali, got married 6 months apart and had babies about 6 months apart. I just love her and her friendship. She married a great guy (except he's a Ute fan) and she has such a beautiful baby girl named Violet.  We enjoyed visiting and swimming with their cute family. A big thanks to them for putting us up a night on our way to San Diego. Miss her already!

 We arrived in San Diego on Wednesday and our first stop was La Jolla and the San Diego Temple. Such a beautiful place - I spent a lot of time there since my apartment was two blocks away and looked out over it's majestic spires. We walked around until Emma got hungry and tired of us taking her picture. Then we headed down to La Jolla Cove and walked around the pier there and checked out all the seals.

 * My new favorite picture!!!

 At the temple we talked with the couple missionaries and they told us about the renovated Mormon Battalion Historical Site in Old Town. We went and got settled into our place (we rented a guest house that had a private pool, spa and grill) and after swimming and taking a nap we headed to Old Town. It was very interesting and a really fun museum. Ironically the sister missionary that took us through was one of my old BYU nursing students! Small world. We tried to have dinner at one of the local Mexican restaurants but Emma only lasted until our food arrived. So we boxed it up and headed back to eat it at our cute little place.

 Like I said above, we had our own private pool and it was heaven. Emma is still a little fish so we spent a lot of time in the pool with her. She even enjoyed chillaxin with daddy in the warm tub (we turned down the temp for her).

 Thursday night we went to Seaport Village and downtown San Diego. It is my second favorite place in SD. We walked along the water, shopped and enjoyed the wonderful weather. Love this place.

 Friday we packed up and headed to the San Diego Zoo - my favorite place in SD! Even though Emma isn't quite at the point where she loves all the animals, she was still very good and we enjoyed ourselves. It was overcast so it made the day even nicer. We walked the whole zoo and saw everything there was to see. I can't wait to take Emma back when she is older.

 They both only had one meltdown!

 Our little bald seal!

This was G's awesome parking job. The best part was that we didn't notice it until we came back out to the car. We laughed so hard!

Friday night we drove back to Las Vegas. Again Emma did great about 99% of the time. I admit I got a little silly and started to drive G nuts. haha. We spent Saturday with Vegas McCoy's. We hit up a fun pool during the day and then we had a Girl's Night for Amberli's bday and went shopping, dinner and a movie. It was so nice of G to let me go spend uninterrupted time with Cori and Amberli. I just love my sister-in-laws. Again, it would be so nice to live closer to all of our family.
We arrived home in one peace and still sane Sunday afternoon. What a wonderful trip! Now on to BYU football season!!!!!