California Trip

We took a two week trip to California in August. We decided to make the journey via car, 16 hours driving over two days. Some new things discovered on the car ride including this new, huge Terrible's gas station outside of Vegas:

After two days in the car, the kids were thrilled to see the ocean

San Clemente Pier

All fun and games until...

 Someone gets knocked out by a wave!

One day we took an excursion to San Diego

 Kids dipping candles:

 Hanging out in Old Town San Diego

 Riding the trolley

 Waterfront Park

 Kids did not like this statute as much as Auntie Amanda

Back in San Clemente, Jack found a wedding ring one morning. His hopes were high that it would be worth a lot of money.

This is the look of sheer disappointment as we found out it was a stainless steel ring, worth less than $20

Thankfully there was fishing to raise his spirits again. Nothing like grossing out your sister by removing a hook:

18 fish caught in one night!

 Happy boy!

Another day we met up with friends at Adventure Playground in Huntington Beach

After the kids were thoroughly bored of the playground, we took them to the beach

And after the beach, we had more swimming at the pool!

Another night on the pier

Our friends from Switzerland were visiting San Clemente at the same time, so we got to spend a few days with them:

Even my aunt Kristi came and joined us at the beach:

 And my parents...

So much fun, it was exhausting!

Plenty of time for boogie boarding

 And playing in the sand:

 After we left San Clemente, we headed to Brea to visit with some long-time family friends:

 Then we headed to Mema's 80th, "Mema Day" party. Totally 80s themed Luke:

 And more swimming

 The next morning we all had brunch at Goofy's kitchen:

After Goofy's kitchen, we went back to Jeff's for one last swim session. It was here that we had our closest drowning encounter. At some point after this photo was taken, Josie decided to take off her life vest that she had always worn for the last two weeks, and jump in the spa. All the adults were sitting just feet away, but no one noticed her jump in. Thank God I looked at just the right time, and saw the empty life vest on the side of the spa, and Josie in the middle. If it had been seconds later, it would have been a different story, but thankfully I grabbed her before she had aspirated any water. It was days before my heart finally calmed down.

 After California, we headed out to Vegas and stopped (again) at the huge Terribles gas station

 Kids always love visiting new hotels

 Dinner with the cousins:

 Family:

 On our way home to Colorado, we hit 200,000 miles on my car! Such a great car!

July

In July, Josie learned how to swing by herself:

Lily jumped out of tree (pressured by her brother) and cracked her jaw/nose on her knee when she landed. The amount of blood pouring from her face, and her inability to close her mouth, made me think she could have broken something. Luke was not home yet, so my neighbors came to stay with Jack and Josie while I ran Lily to the ER. She was so hysterical that they though she had broken something too. It took a while, but finally she calmed down and they were able to determine that her frenulum was torn, but no broken bones or teeth... phew!

Over the 4th of July weekend we headed up to Steamboat Springs again. We climbed to the top of the hill to watch the laser show, but were unable to see anything. So we just hung out and watched random fireworks in the distance.

 We visited the Old Town Hot Springs

 Jack discovered battleship

 We brought our bikes for a family bike ride along the river

 Slurpies were our reward for the long bike ride on the hot day

 Josie didn't quite make it the whole way back

 The kids enjoyed the parkour park

We bought two extra tubes (no more air mattresses) and spent the day on the river

 The water was much more shallow and the tubing was slow

Luke and Papi were able to get in some mountain biking

 Our family photo:

More of July was spent working on the new school. One day Jack helped me run a booth at a local fair. It's no easy job to be in the hot sun, talking to people all day: 

 Another night, Luke took the kids to the drive in so I could finish up some more writing. Of course, they take advantage of being with dad by asking for lots of sugar:

One weekend, we stopped in to visit the grand opening of a new pizza restaurant. I am a sucker for free stuff, and we all scored pizzas as well as tons of free tokens to redeem for free pizzas other days. Plus, the kids got these awesome face paintings: