Saying Goodbye

After living near my parents for the past seven years it was time to say goodbye. When we moved here my Dads retirement seemed so far away. And then it seemed that we blinked our eyes and it was here!  We are going to miss them more than we could possibly say.  The older girls especially had gotten so close to my mom and dad and its going to be hard to be here without them.  No more Sunday dinners with them. No more gas station trips.  No more sleepovers. It will definitely be an adjustment.  But we are so happy that my dad finally gets to retire.  We will miss them like crazy!

My mom and Nellie have a special relationship.  Nellie thinks my mom walks on water and wants to be just like her.  She is really going to miss her Grandma a lot.  It will be really hard not having hr around because anytime that Nellie was having a hard time I could have my mom talk to her and it seemed to straighten her right up.  We sure love them and wish they could stay here with us!

Cooking Camp

Nellie and Jane were wanting to do a cooking camp, but being the person that I am, I forgot to sign them up early for the city ones. And of course they were all filled up. But then someone reminded me that Sister Cain from our ward did a cooking camp and so we signed them up with her and it was awesome!  They went for a week everyday and then on the last day they had one of us as a guest for dinner where they showcased their new skills. It was fun that they both did it because then Kevy and I both got to go and be their guests. It ended on Nellie's birthday which was actually kind of fun for her because she loves cooking so she got to do something she really liked on her special day.  They definitely want to do it again next next year, and I can't wait to go back and have one of their great lunches again. 

 It was a really yummy lunch, they did a great job making it!

 It was so cute because they made special aprons to have and they got a cookbook of all the recipes thy made over the week.  They would come home each day and tell me about what they made and how they made it.  It is so fun to see the kids getting older and learning new skills. Especially skills that will help me!

Day 6 Huntington Beach

After the night we had before we all slept in pretty late. Chanelle had parked in a different part of the parking lot at the game so she got to go back a completely different way and was able to miss the horrible traffic we got in so she got back much earlier than us.  She was nice enough to go and get some really yummy donuts for breakfast. After being lazy fora bit we headed to Walmart to get some food and lunch and then headed to Huntington Beach because we hadn't gotten enough beach in, hah! But seriously do kids ever get sick of the beach?  I know I was all beached out by this point, but it was fun to watch the kids have so much fun with tier cousins!  We parked in a parking garage but then it was quite a walk down to the beach with all our stuff and then to make matters worse they were doing a ton of construction on the beach for some surfing championship of something so it was quite a walk around. The water was a lot warmer though and the kids really had a blast.  The crazy thing is that I hardly even touched the water on the whole trip.  A little bit on my feel was all.  I guess I am getting old because it just didn't sound very fun to me.  

 Annie and Lucy were really cute on this trip, but I cant wait until next year when Clara is three and the three of them will be inseparable.

 Clara hung with me on the towels most of the time and then we went hunting for some shells.

 

 The big kids again made their usual trench like they did every beach day.

That evening we headed back to our hotel and got ready and went to dinner at Cafe Rio that Kevin scouted out, haha!  All the while Kevin cooked up a plan to take the big kids to an Angels game, since we were so close to the stadium and they were playing the red socks who happen to be Austin's favorite team. I couldn't say no to that! So Chanelle, Kristen and I took the little kids back to the hotel and we tried to watch a show in Kristen's room and let the little ones watch a show in ours, but you can guess how that went.  We did get a fireworks show from Disneyland that night though so that was kind of fun.  We got up the next morning and headed home.  It was a great trip and we really had a ton of fun.  It sure is nice to have kids getting older and easier to take places!

Day 5

We left Santa Maria early and stopped at McDonalds for breakfast. Holy cow was the expensive.  We all shared food and yet it was almost $30!  I feel like we barely had anything, but man feeding this many people can sometimes be pretty ridiculous. The kids thought it would be fun to play on Ronald McDonald. 

I wanted to stop in a little town that was about 5 miles off the path because it was called Solvang and it is a little dutch town that is completely made to look like it is Dutch. It was really cute and we stopped for some really amazing pastries and shared them.  We got a ton of strange looks and a lot of Asians were taking our pictures. All the girls wore their darling dresses that Grandma made them and they looked so cute, but I think that may have just contributed to us looking more like Polygamists.

 We thought we would have all this time to make it to LA and to Anaheim to our hotel before we headed to the Dodger game that night. Wow were we wrong! Even though by normal distance standards we should have gotten there in less tahn three hours, easily! It took us all day to get there, and as we got closer it just kept getting worse.  We finally realized that there was no way we were going to make it down to our hotel and then back up to the game, so we deideded to just stop and get some lunch/dinner and hang there for a while and then head to the game.  I just dont know if I could ever live down there becasue the traffic makes me want to get a gun everytime I am there! 

 The kids were really excited to go to a dodger game because the dodgers were playing so well and we thought there would be a good chance to see them win!  Boy were we wrong.  They had a terrible outing and lost pretty handily. It was a little disappointing, although we did still have a good time being together at the game.

 We happen to go on a giveaway night, and although it wasn't that great of a giveaway , it was still something and we had never gotten anything at a game before so that was pretty cool.

 Clara was such a good sport that night, and really the whole trip!  She really loves her cousin Ruby so much and was always asking for her and wanting to sit with her.

Unfortunately the only way to get out of the stadium was back through horrible traffic and it took forever to get to our hotel!  It was one of those really soul stretching patience breaking times where you almost have a breakdown because you are so dang tired and it feels like you are really never going to make it to your destination!  We got in that night and all just collapsed in bed and let everyone sleep in for a long time!

Day 3- Monterey and Carmel by the Sea

On day three we decided to hang out in Monterey and Carmel. We had only been down here once before so it was really hard to decided where we wanted to spend our time with all there is to do!  We decided to do Dennis the Menace park since we have so many little kids with us.  We had been here before but only us from this group so we felt like it was worth our time again. The kids had a good time exploring and playing together. 

After the park we headed down to the fisherman's warf for lunch and to explore a little. And we got the WORST looks!  I seriously couldn't believe that people would so blatantly stare that way and talk and point like that. I would stare right back at them because it seriously made me really mad!  It had nothing to do with the kids behavior because they were all really good!  It was just because there were so many of them.  We found a place to have lunch at the warf but it was so pricey. I think next time I would go down to Cannery Row and see what they had there. 

Clara was so good on this trip and loved to get her picture taken.  She was waiting so patiently for all the other kids.

After lunch we decided to do the 17 mile drive. It drives along the coast of the Monterey Peninsula and you get to see some amazing views and also some amazing houses.

Pictures just never really do justice to how it looks in person, but it was pretty spectacular!

we stopped at a little view area and let the kids out to explore, but the rocks were pretty treacherous and I was a little worried with  the little ones we had so we didn't stay too long.

The drive ended over in Carmel which was where we were wanting to go so it was perfect. The beach there was spectacular. The sand was super white and so soft and the water was so blue!  The only downer was how cold the water was. Even the brave kids didn't get in too much.  But it was still so fun to play at the beach.

I unfortunately didn't get too many pictures. I had to go to the bathroom and the only bathroom was pretty far down the beach so I missed taking pictures. Clara had a good time digging in the sand though. After the beach it was getting close to dinner time so we went up to Carmel where they had some little shops and we found a little candy shop and we let the kids get a little treat.  After that we went to Pizza My Heart and had dinner. It was good, we had never been and I had always heard about it.  It was nice too because it was really busy so our kids didn't stick out like a sore thumb so bad.  It was a really long day but we had a great time and by the time we reached the hotel it was pretty much time to go to bed.  The kids were exhausted and went right to sleep.