Preparing for a 17 day trip with five people is quite the undertaking. Plus, we had to plan for beach weather, mountain weather, camping, fishing and swimming supplies. Needless to say the car was packed.
What worried me most about the vacation was the long drive to California. I knew Jack and Lily would be fine watching movies and playing in the car, but I was worried about Josie who hates the carseat. We decided to leave at 2:30am on Thursday morning in hopes she would sleep most of the drive. It worked like a charm and we didn't even make our first stop until we were already halfway through our drive for that day.
Here are the kids set up with movies and slushies for the second part of the drive
Josie stretching before getting back into her carseat
We covered 10.5 hours in that first day. The most frustrating part of it all was searching for our hotel. I guess I don't get any cellphone coverage in St. George, Utah so all we had was an address to the hotel (I couldn't even get coverage to make a phone call or to look at a map). So we drove around searching and searching. We even stopped in and asked to no avail. Finally a gas station attendant was able to help us and we found our hotel!
We took the kids swimming at the hotel and then we went in search of dinner. We went into a Buffalo Wild Wings and it was a terrible experience. The service was awful and the beer was expensive (think $15 for two beers). We won't ever go back to Buffalo Wild Wings again
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Jack looks exhausted from too much
driving and you can see the expensive beer |
Friday mooring we woke up early again to finish out the next 6 hour portion of our drive. It was like heaven to finally see this sign:
We made such great time that we arrived at the beach before noon. Of course we were all dying to get out of the car and into the water. The kids were thrilled.
Saturday morning we woke up and headed straight back to the beach for a morning walk to the pier. Lily wanted to wear her bathing suit, but Jack insisted he didn't want to swim. I should have known better, there is no keeping Jack out of the water... first they just started playing in the shallow water as we walked...
And then it progress to crawling...
And that was it, they were soaked.
Then Jack discovered there were sand crabs and he had a blast digging for them
Saturday night Luke's family showed up. The kids were thrilled to see them!
Sunday morning we headed back to the beach for some good ole sand burying
And playing
And hanging out with family
Jack loves to boogie board
Monday we headed out to find some tide pools. We went to Shaw's cove in Laguna Beach which is known for great tide pools
But we didn't think to check the tides and by the time we got there (noonish) the tide pools were gone. It was still a really nice cove and we hung out there half the day
After spending the day at the cove we headed to Dana Point Harbor for dinner. Then Luke, Jack, Grammie, Josiah and Grandma Dian all headed out on a fishing trip.
The boat the left on was the Clemente. They took the twilight fishing trip and and had a great time, Josiah caught 9 fish and others on the boat caught a 35 pound tuna fish.
Meanwhile, Amanda, Lily, Josie and I headed out for a girls night. First we stopped by my friend Joyce's house to see her and her new baby.
Then we took Lily to the mall to go shopping. As soon as she spied the Disney store, she was sold. It was like heaven for her! She was bouncing around the store so happy
She quickly found a PJ set that she wanted and would not let go of.
She also picked out a pair of shoes. Here is Lily and her new outfit.
What a fun day for everyone!
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