We survived our 7 day long road trip to California, via Las Vegas, and we had a lot of fun. First of all, I have to say that the kids did amazingly well during all the driving and travel. I was surprised and expected a lot more whining and complaining than occurred. I think it helped that they were all so happy just to get to do so many new and exciting things, and to get to spend time with our loved ones.
We began the first part of the trip by driving through to Las Vegas, about 8 hours from our house. We stayed two nights in the Excalibur hotel, and while in Vegas I was able to visit with a friend of mine that I haven't seen in over 12 years. It was so great to see her and meet her two babies; it was definitely a highlight of our trip, at least for me.
While we were in Las Vegas, we also did a few of the other family-friendly activities, like watching the fountain show at the Bellagio hotel, and seeing the lion exhibit at the MGM Grand. Mostly the kids just wanted to spend their time at the pool at the Excalibur. As hotel pools go, it was definitely above and beyond average. There were actually 3 separate pools, two with waterfalls and slides.
After leaving Vegas, we headed to southern California.
Our final destination was Corona Del Mar, but we made a few stops on the way there. Since Chris and I both served our missions in that area, we wanted to see a few of the places that brought back memories for each of us. The kids were a little less enthused about this part of the trip, and more eager to get to "grandma and grandpa's house", where they would get to spend time at the beach!
We then spent 4 days enjoying time in California, where the weather was perfect and there were flowers and palm trees everywhere, which made me very happy! We did spend almost an entire day on the beach, where the kids never seemed to tire of playing in the sand or trying to "catch a wave"! Unfortunately, that much time in the sun, despite multiple applications of sunblock, left Chris and the three older kids with horrible sunburns. Chris and Sophie both had some blistering, and they were all in some pain the next day. We decided to stay out of the sun for the most part, after that, and went to an awesome children's museum called the Science and Discovery Center. We were able to occupy several hours there.
On the drive home, we took one last detour through Apple Valley, California, in the desert. Apple Valley was where Chris and I were both serving when he was my zone leader for a few months, and being there made us both wax nostalgic. It felt great to be in that area again.
Finally we were on the road again and headed home, but by the time we got to St. George, UT after driving about 6 hours, we felt too worn out to drive the remaining 6 hours and decided to stay the night at a hotel. It was a relaxing respite before ending our trip back in Idaho.
By the time we got home, we had over 500 pictures on our camera. After editing and deleting duplicates, etc., I've narrowed it down to 239 photos. I'll post a few of my favorites with this blog, but for those of you that may be interested, click on the following link to go to the web album with all the pictures from our trip:
Now it's time to start preparing for over a week of camping and a family reunion in a couple of weeks!
I know I post a lot of camping pictures, particularly in the summer, but also at other times of the year. I guess it's just something we do a lot of, and I have so much fun capturing moments of the kids enjoying just being kids. I overheard them talking to each other this morning saying: "Being a kid is way better than being a grown-up, I bet. All we have to do is play." I actually really do hope that my kids feel that is their reality. So on that note, here are some pictures from our most recent campout to a place called Big Springs, just on the other side of the mountains south of us. When we arrived at the campground, the camp host came to let us know that there had been two recent black bear sitings right in the campground. We were on the lookout the whole time. In fact, the second night we were all sitting by the fire when Chris was startled by a sound he heard, and it was "all he wrote", as they say. The kids jumped up and ran into the trailer, and it took us about an hour, maybe more, to get Sophie to settle into sleep.
Another highlight, sort of as an addendum to my previous post, we had another tooth loss incident. Noah was outside at the picnic table eating his scrambled eggs in the morning, Chris and I were in the camper, when he came up to the screen door and announced, with his mouth still full of food: "My tooth is in my eggs, my tooth is in my eggs!!" As he said this, a tooth plopped out of his mouth onto his paper plate; so gross!
