Southern California/ Scout Camp

Last week John went to scout camp. Before he left, I took the kids to southern California! First we went to my aunt's home (just north of L.A.) and played and played! The first day we drove down and then went to Newport Beach so my cousin could have her senior pictures taken- and we were able to jump in for a few pictures too! We got to take a little 3-car ferry across a channel between Newport and Balboa Island. Balboa Island was SOO cute! It is this little island with shopping and lots of houses right up next to each other that sell for millions. I would love to go back and take tons of pictures and go shopping! Plus the kids thought the ferry boat was AWESOME!
The next day we played all day long! Trampoline, pool, cars, everything! Thanks to my cousins for being SO great and playing with us all day. The kids loved it and talk about them all the time.
Saturday we went and saw Cars 2 at the Burbank Theater (Thanks to Uncle Matt for taking us and getting us in with all the Disney employees). It was so fun! We are excited to see it again with all the grandparents when everyone is home. I think the plot was over Zach's head (it is totally a 007 movie) but he liked seeing the characters again and thought it was funny.
Sunday we went to Leslie's ward (they have a cute play area outside for nursery that Elizabeth loved) and after lunch we headed out to La Quinta (Palm Springs area).

We made it to La Quinta, and it was hot! It was 109 all week and in the 90s at night. But inside it was nice and cool, so we hung out a lot. It was so nice! Nothing to clean, nothing to work on, just hanging out. We watched movies, looked up fun stuff on the internet, took naps, swam in the pools, and overall just took it easy. We loved it! Thanks so much to Julie and Emily for taking such good care of us and being so fun to hang out with.
I forgot to bring a pack n play to La Quinta, so I tried to have the three of us in one bed. At one point Zach's foot ended up on Elizabeth's head, so I put him on the floor and the next day bought a pack n play off of craig's list :)


Thursday morning we left and went to DISNEYLAND! My aunt was able to get us in with my cousin and her friends and then we were off! And by 'we' I mean that it was the kids and me and that's all! Plus, I didn't have our stroller so we rented one- but they don't have double strollers, so we just had Elizabeth in a stroller and Zach had to keep up all day. I figured we would take it slow and just do whatever rides we could but we ended up doing a lot! Including Peter Pan for the first time since we did it 2.5 years ago and it was a bummer since it was a loooong line and short ride. This time we have seen the movie and the kids were excited to ride on a pirate ship, so we waited in line and went. They loved it so much it's now on the same level as the trains (!) as being a fan favorite. We stayed all day and drank a lot of drinks- it was hot and crowded (which we expected so we didn't mind). One of the best things all day was from my cousin: we were in a show (Disney Junior) and I was texting with my cousin who was in line for Toy Story Mania. Awesome ride, hour long wait. So the show ends and I text her and she says they are getting towards the end of the line. So we book it through the crowds (Zach running and this is almost the end of the day) and walk up to the ride. I looked for her in the line and couldn't find her, I called but she couldn't hear me and said they were about to get on. Finally we found each other at the exact spot where I could lift Zach over the wall and she could lift him up to her spot! There were three of them so it was easy to have Zach just go with my cousin. Phew. It was going to be a long end of the day and they saved us! When they got off I told them I was treating everyone to ice cream because that was awesome! We went on a few more rides, went back over to Disneyland to do the train around the whole park and then went home. We had such a fun time! We left the next morning and got home about an hour before John got home from scout camp.

John had some pictures from scout camp on his phone, but they got deleted. (all the pictures on his phone got deleted...darn iPhone 3!) They had a GREAT week. He was over 2 scouts, one of them had a very serious concussion last Thanksgiving. He was hardly able to leave his home for months and is just starting to be able to get out and do things, but still has a constant pain level of at least 7. John helped them get their merit badges and they each completed at least 5 and a couple of partials. They got candy every day and got to go swimming, shoot guns, mess around and do guy stuff. John had a great time and got to know a lot of the boys for our stake.