California or Bust!

Okay-vacation pictures! I have a lot to put on here...just fair warning. We decided to get away for some fun this fall after everything in our life started to slow down. We thought one last hurrah of warm weather would be nice before our New England winters blew in. In the end, I found some cheap plane tickets to San Diego, we called up our dear friends, Peter & Liz Lignos, who live there, and before you know it, we were headed to the West Coast. Our trip was from Thursday to Tuesday (oh how I love the flexible scheduling as a nurse!) so we really had Friday-Monday to plan the fun stuff.
First, we rented a Toyota Sienna while we were there. Giving the whole minivan idea a test run. It was fabulous. We were able to fit 4 adults and 4 kids with carseats in it with room leftover. I was impressed.
On Friday, we loaded up and headed to Sea World! The kids had a great time! There were only a small crowd of people there so we basically got to get into anything we wanted right away. No waiting in lines at all. The day was gorgeous! We all enjoyed the animals, the Shamu show, and even a little face painting at the end of the day.

























The next day we hung out at their house and spent a few hours at the beach. It wasn't really the sunbathing kind of day...cloudy, big waves, and a bit chilly. But that didn't stop my daughter from stripping down to her swimsuit and jumping right in. She was fearless! She saw all the surfers out there and just assumed she could do it too. Thank goodness we didn't have a surfboard cause she would have tried! Ben ate the sand and hung out with me while Jason and Abby got wet from head to toe.





On Sunday, we loaded up again and headed for Disneyland. Tickets were bought and we had to go on this day. Only problem was that my dear daughter had a fever and wasn't feeling well at all. She was a trooper-rode all the rides, had fun...but I think this day was a bit fuzzy for her. She doesn't remember much after it was all said and done. There was a much bigger crowd here so we waited about 20-30 minutes for each ride. Plus we came right when they were switching over to Christmas from the Halloween stuff. So the whole Small World area was closed, and they were filming Stevie Wonder there that day to open up their Christmas Spectacular. A little crazy, but we had fun. We did meet three princesses when we first got there-Jasmine, Belle, and Ariel. That was a highlight for the girls.