An Adventure...

There's nothing like vacation... especially when your kids are getting along.

We spent our second day of vacation at California Adventure. We tried to continue our "tour of firsts" but couldn't miss our favorites... like Toy Story Mania. This time though, the boys rode in the own car alone.

Our next first was riding the California Screamer... Jordan was FINALLY tall enough!

Not really suprising... the boy LOVED it! He is such a daredevil with rides (and a wuss the other 98% of the time).

We ran into the Phineas & Ferb street show that had just started. My boys love all things P&F and were excited to join in on the fun!

We also become Senior Wilderness Explorers! I love the movie UP!

After riding the rest of our favorite rides and eating at our favorite restaurants we settled in to watch World of Color. It is amazing!

Diz-knee-land...

My little midgets have the best darn Daddy in the whole wide world. He took us back to Disneyland to celebrate our last weekend before school starts. We spent two wonderful days in Disneyland (our 2nd home) bliss.

This trip was all about doing the unusual. We have gotten in a habit of doing the same routine on each of our Disney trips. First ride is Jungle Cruise, skip the treehouse etc. We made a point of trying new things.

Jordan says first stop is...

The new Star Tours! No Rebel Spies were in our family this time around. But we did have a few...

Jedi Knights!

One fought Darth Vader:

And the other Darth Maul:

In our bazillion trips over the last 2 years we had never taken the raft ride over to Tom Sawyer's Island. It was a big hit with the boys. They loves the treehouse, the caves and especially the pirate treasure!

We actually let the boys venture into Toontown (too hot and boring for me...) and stood in the long line to visit the big guy himself...

In the Tiki, Tiki, Tiki... Tiki room we shared a Dole Whip and a Dole Whip Float (Tiki Juice, as the boys say) and woke up that silly bird Jose!

My fabulous fellows are usually on best behaviour at Disneyland but this trip was all about being different. This little man got mad about something un-memorable and put himself into the corner while in the Splash Mountain ride. (like Mother like Son)

My boys spun their poor Mommy around and around (or maybe it was the other way around) on our favorite yellow teacup.

The Tiki Juice kicked in during the Jungle Cruise and my little guy got a little loopy:

Around 6:00 p.m. it finally dawned on me that we had never stayed at the one park all day long. It was kind of nice. We finished our night off with dinner, a show and fireworks. But before we camped out at our perfect watching spot we rode the happiest boat ride on earth:

Oh yeah, and Dillon decided to take Daddy up on his offer from Splash Mountain earlier that day and do this for a churro:

Too bad it was on the shuttle bus on our way back to the hotel. :)

We're alive... I swear!

I feel like a total slacker in regards to my blog lately. Lately as in the last year! Sheesh!

I am going to try to start blogging again on a more regular basis. It seems to have gone out of style but I really love having a record of our lives to look back on!

A very brief recap of things I have missed:

1. We moved to a new house in March. We are still in Buckeye but in a better neighborhood and much larger home. (with a much smaller payment)

This picture has nothing to do with it, but it was taken here and it is funny.

2. We finished up the Muckdogs season. It was fun to have the boys play together. Jordan suprised us by being a much better athlete than we gave him credit for.

 Dillon was babysat by a very patient coach every game.

Both boys enjoyed it so we are going to try again next year!

3. Jordan lost his first tooth. Not to be confused with the 5 pulled back when he was just a little thing.

4. Blair and I celebrated our 8th Anniversary. We took the family on an epic SoCal vacation and even spent a few days on Catalina Island where we honeymooned.

5. Our EPIC Socal vacation included:

• Touring The Midway

• The San Diego Zoo

• Catalina Island

• Disneyland of which I have no pictures because we are lame and I was tired of carrying a camera around.

6. The boys and I spent a week at Grandma Hun't with Betsy and the cousins. Our week ended with a family 4th of July celebration. Gramps put on a fireworks show and Blair started the yard on fire with a sparkler bomb. (No pics of the bomb.)

7. We celebrating my niece Zoey's 1st birthday at our house. She is a Dora fanatic and loved her Dora cake.

8. School starts in 2 1/2 weeks and I return on Monday to prepare. Hopefully I will stay motivated and updated :)

Yo-Semite...

Half Dome

For our "something different" summer trip we decided on Yosemite. Both Blair and I were envisioning forests full of Giant Redwoods (wrong) lots of bears (wrong) and it being as beautiful as Yellowstone  (wrong wrong wrong). We have come to the conclusion that we are glad we saw it, but once was definitely enough. We are officially Yellowstone people.

The trip wasn't miserable by any means. And Yosemite is beautiful, but you can only drive so far through a forest with nothing to see but forest. And the super winding roads were killer on all our stomachs. Especially the little two. (Yes Mom I was prepared with barf buckets... but Dill puked on himself and in a snack bowl and Jordan made it to the parking lot and puked all over my feet.)

In the sun at the Glacier Point overlook

Found some shade!

Yosemite has some amazing waterfalls. We went at the perfect time of year when all of them were running. They have a few that only flow during the melt off of early summer.

Bridal veil Falls from Tunnel View

Getting wet underneath BV Falls

Two crazy boys in fromt of the rushing rapids

For me the most noticeable difference was the lack of visible animals. I know they were there but it was nothing like driving through Yellowstone and seeing bears, bison, moose, elk, coyotes etc... We saw a couple squirrels and that was it. 

What I was looking forward to the most was seeing the Redwoods. Growing up I watched the movie "The Gnome Mobile" and I envisioned that Yosemite was just like that. In reality there is only one grove of the giant trees. They are still pretty amazing.

Two Sisters

The Midgets in comparison to the California Tunnel Tree

While not entirely as expected the trip was fun. We got out of the heat and saw the beauty of the country. All our trips this summer have solidified the desire I have to travel with my children (come what may) and show them the beauty of the world that we are lucky to live in. 

Pebbles...

After our stop to see the seals we continued on up the coast...

 Our next scheduled stop was to take the midgets to the Aquarium in Monterey. We decided to get there via the 17 mile drive through Pebble Beach. Thankfully our trip was the week before the Masters and we were able to do it. If only we were millionaires and Blair could play the course there. It was awesome. Even the buck that was minutes away from from getting run over by us was awesome  (who would have that we would see that on a golf course on the beach).

You can't drive that close to the beach without getting your feet in the sand at least once right? They had a ball!

That was until they realized just how cold the water is! Poor Pickles turned blue!

Seals...

Well we did it! We survived our last "big" vacation of 2010 (and probably our last for a long time).  We broke from the usual tradition of visting Yellowstone and decided that this year we were going to go to Yosemite instead. The boys prepped for the trip by watching Yogi Bear cartoons and thought we were headed t o Jellystone so really it didn't matter much where we went.

We took the scenic route to get there and traveled along the Pacific Coast Highway. It was such a pretty drive. Espcially the farther north we got. The best stop by far was at the Elephant Seal rookery near Piedras Blancas.

 The beach was absolutely covered in seals! The boys thought it was awesome. And stinky! Oh Boy it was stinky! We mostly saw the big males who were either fighting or lounging it the hot sand sloughing off their winter fur. Dillon and I kept a lookout for babies but didn't spy any.

 Maybe I can convince Blair to head back in December when the babies are born. But I doubt it...