Our California Adventure

Well we've had this trip planned forever and we've looked forward to it for so long and it now it seems like it was over in a flash. We had so much fun!!! Before we left I was dreading the drive with 3 little girls but it actually wasn't that bad. We left on Friday after school and work and went as far as Mesquite the first night. Let me just say thank heaven for the portable T.V./DVD players. I can't even imagine what it would have been like without a movie marathon in the back seat. My parents had rented an awesome beach house for the week in Encinitas that was big enough for my entire family. (Thank you Grandma and Grandpa!)We fit 15 of us comfortably and we only took up the 1st floor. We spent our first day there on the beach and the kids loved it! They found tons of seashells! Greg was obsessed with looking and found some really cool ones. We waded in the water but it was pretty cold so nobody really got too far in. Then we spent the next 5 days at Disneyland, California Adventures, Sea world, and Universal Studios. We got great tickets at Costco and saved a lot of money getting them there. Then we got up and left Saturday morning and went as far as St. George and came back home on Sunday. My sisters family has done this trip a few times so they knew right where to go and how to get there and we all had 2-way radios to communicate so that made it really nice. There were a few times Greg got a little stressed out, like when we were right in the midst of LA's gridlock freeway traffic and he swore his left arm was going numb but we all came out of it alive.
The girls were all so good. Chandler wasn't crazy about the rides. Some of them are pretty dark and noisy even though it's just a car ride so most times one of us just sat it out while the others rode. My parents stayed home when we went to California Adventures and kept her so that was really nice. Gracie and Hayden had a blast! Gracie was a lot more daring than I thought she would be and went on one roller coaster 5 or 6 times and even went on the big one that goes upside down and loved it! Hayden really wanted to go on the Tower of Terror so I took her on that and it scared her to death! I asked her the next day if she wanted to go on it again and she said "NEVER!" She wasn't always tall enough to go on some of the bigger ones but she never got too mad or sad about it which was a relief. We got a lot of autographs from a lot of characters. I think the only ones we didn't get were Cinderella and Sleeping beauty and I think Grandma Linda was more excited than the little girls to see them meet the princesses.
It was just a really nice vacation. Now we'll know what we should and shouldn't do next time and I think Greg would even go back now that he knows the roads. I asked him what we had to look forward to now that it was over and he said "Nothing! Absolutely nothing!" It was a little too enthusiastic for me. I guess we'll just have to look forward to the summer and warm weather and yard work :< and scrapbooking the 333 pictures that I took on this vacation. That will keep me plenty busy until the next vacation.