Cali, summer 2009

This summer, we took an impromtu vacation to Cali over the 4th of July weekend. Our intentions were to go to the beach and hang out for a few days, but apparantly so was the rest of the countries. Our first day at the beach was crowded, cold and windy. The kids were miserable and didnt want to go back. It was also so crowded that we drove around for more than an hour looking for parking. We heard that it was even more so on the 4th. We really didnt even want to attempt it, so we looked for other things to do.

We decided to go see the Queen Mary, but by the time we got there, they were closing. Bill used his sweet talk and the attendant let us in for free.

We were pretty stoked.



This was on the deck of the ship that overlooked the water. It was so pretty. This was all of our first times on any sort of ship and it was so cool. We couldnt look at it fast enough, but we were so rushed because they were closing and our parking was almost up.

We almost felt like we were in England or something with this cool phone booth. We can pretend, right??

Avery liked to pretend that she could see all the way into space.

We did have a little bit of time to explore the inside of the ship and see some of its history. I cant believe how small people were back then.

The boys had so much fun on the "war" part of the ship. They played on those machine guns until we pryed their hands from the trigger.

Sea World

We decided for our last 2 days to go to Sea World. The kids loved it!! I forgot how cool that place is.

The first show we saw was the dolphin show and the kids wanted to sit in the "splash" zone. It was a warm day so they thought it would be fun to get wet.

Not so. They hated everysecond of being wet. We had to listen to them complain for about and hour until they were semi dry.

This little monkey especially hated it

The favorite show was the animal show-the one with the dogs, cats and pigs. We saw that one about 4 times. It was Averys favorite. She kept asking Bill all sorts of questions.

This day was the 4th of July, so we stayed and saw the fireworks and also saw a few shows on our way back to the hotel.
Since we werent planning on Sea World, our hotel was about 45 minutes away. By the time we got back, they were out. We had to get one of those baggage carts to take them up to the room.

The next day we saw all the shows we had missed the day before.

The kids loved the seals and they even got to feed them a fish.

Avery was in love with them and wanted to take them home. No thanks Aves.

This girl is afraid of nothing. She put her had right in and grabbed one. We got in trouble though, there was a sign that said do not pick up the starfish. Whoops.

We saw this cool cirque show, although these guys were kinda yucky.

The kids loved every second of it and thought it was so cool to swing from ropes and do tons of flips.

The best part of the show was at the end because the kids got to pet the animals. Lani talked the ear off of the workers in telling them how we got a rescue dog, but then she dropped her and she broke her leg and then she got better and then she ran away. Im sure the lady thought we were nuts.

Those little piggies were so cute.

We of course had to see the Budwiser horses. Massive, those things are.

Caleb kept looking at the horses privates in awe of how big it was. It was a bit embarressing.

I took the opportunity while we were resting, to take some pictures of each of the kids.

All in all, it was a fun family vacation. Next time we will not be going on a holiday weekend and we will definatly be more prepared!!!