Family Vacay Highlights

Well hello. I didn't give the heads up here, but if you couldn't tell, we've been gone. We spent the past week in California on a little family trip. Our "last" family vacation before our first bird flies from the nest (in 3 weeks!) We got back yesterday and I have a ton of unpacking and laundry to do. Plus, I have a lot of catching up here to do, as always. Before I get into catching up with the fun and details of each day, I thought I'd cover a few of the highlights. We left Monday morning around 6 and stopped in Mesquite for lunch at McDonalds, then finished our drive down with a couple of hours added to the trip because of bad traffic. We arrived Monday night. Tuesday we went swimming at the hotel and went to the beach at Crystal Cove. 

It was fun but quite chilly. Wednesday... we drove up to LA to try to visit La La Land sites. That was a fail. We can back in the evening for more swimming and fun at the resort -

And Joseph and I went to the Newport Temple while Corey took the kids to Laguna Beach.

When we came back Corey gave a lesson about God's creations - (we need a long couch like this!)

How God has created "world's without number" (Moses 1:33) - which is what it's like trying to count one tiny pinch of sand from the beach. Thursday we went to Disney's California Adventure. Corey and I took turns watching the little boys. One amazing thing was just happening to run into MY SISTER from Texas at Bug's Life land! How crazy is that?!?!

She showed me how to use the Disney app and I took the first half of the day watching the little boys and ordered fast passes for later. When Corey tagged me in, I took the kids and we went on some rides. Riding the Radiator Spring Racer cars with Natalie and Sophi was one of my highlights. We met up with Mel and Wes on that - they jumped into the fastpass lane with us, we saved them a good hour! Then we went over to use our Guardians of the Galaxy fast pass where Ethan and Joseph found us, and after giving sad eyes to the Disney cast member letting me into the fast pass lane, she said "oh, you guys can go!" so we all went on that together! The teenage boys were happy

Then over to Soaring - we got a whole row for us

Then to Grizzly Rapids together

Then I tagged Corey back in and they went to Radiator Racers for Corey to use a fast pass with the kids while I took another turn with the toddlers - Daniel pet McQueen like he was a soft kitten.

Walking out of the park, it was fun to see Corey and Joseph walking with little kids on their shoulders. I joined in, then Ethan, and soon we were all carrying someone! Mel was the odd man out and took the picture for us. It was a good way to get to the bus faster and not loose little kids!

Friday we checked out and headed to Las Vegas. More swimming - Owen learned how to swim with floaties!

 Joseph and I went to the Las Vegas Temple on Saturday morning.

And I got lots of pictures of awesome flowers, like these desert flowers at the temple. So pretty.

So there's some high lights and pictures, I'll give more details of the fun each day soon.