Chillaxin' at the Beach!

Oh, how I love the ocean!

On Tuesday, we spent the day relaxing at the beach house.

Well, the women and kids played at the beach.  The men went deep sea fishing.

My brother caught this scary lookin' fish.

I wasn't feeling well, thanks to one of my "gallbladderless attacks", so it was the 

perfect day to take it easy.

After the men returned from their fishing excursion, the whole family went to 

Ruby's Diner, on the pier, for "Linner". 

Watching for Dolphins

At sunset, we had family pictures taken on the beach.  I haven't gotten copies yet, but 

you can see we had a beautiful setting!

I realized through looking at the pictures how much my Dillon loves the beach!

It's been a couple weeks, but I should probably go check his ears for sand :o)

Disneyland!

On Monday morning, we were up bright and early and made it to Disneyland before they opened.

Ah, Disneyland.  We've missed you.

 Meeting Mickey.  

We're missing a few in this picture...some of us are afraid of mice, I guess.

We learned in a Disney trivia book that the lavender teacup spins the fastest,

so of course my boys, their cousin Sam, and Uncle Jon had to test it.

 Well, most most of my boys.  Dillon was perfectly happy in the orange teacup.

Justin loved meeting the characters this year, and gave Tigger a high five.

 Caleb and his cousin Josh were chosen to fight Darth Maul at the Jedi training academy.  His cousins Sam and Jacob got to fight Darth Vader. It was fun to have four different Padowans to cheer for.

Splash Mountain is still my favorite ride. Between these three pictures, you can find all of the original six.  Mom, Dad, Me, Tyler, Ben, and Charlotte.

 After playing hard all day, we went to the Downtown Disney District for dinner at Tortilla Jo's.  All the kids got balloons from a balloon artist.

 Brayden got this monkey in a banana tree, and my niece Alivia got Ariel!  Who woulda thunk you could make a mermaid out of balloons?

A huge thanks to Uncle Ben for collecting our tickets and running around to get fast passes throughout the day.  Because of him, we were able to do as much in one day as we got done in two days last summer.

California, here we come!

I can't believe how long it's been since I last blogged!  Perhaps someday I'll go back and fill in the past two months, but if I don't post about this trip soon, I know I'll never catch up.

Earlier this month, we had the opportunity to spend a week in California with my entire family. We celebrated Mother's Day, my brother Ben's graduation, and my Dad's birthday while we were there. My dad rented us a house on Newport Beach and, despite the fact that we had 21 people sharing 2 bathrooms, it was an amazing time!

Here we are, acclimating and entering the wifi password into our devices.  First things first, you know.

We stayed in the beach house with the red umbrella.  Notice all the windows.  I absolutely LOVED waking up and opening those blinds every morning to watch the ocean waves while I had breakfast.

 The view from the back patio.  We were literally ON the beach.  The kids and their cousins were in heaven. The day we arrived (Saturday) was very crowded with people playing volleyball, surfers, and sailboats.  Every day for the rest of the week looked like this:

 I've had to vacuum sand out of my washing machine twice, but it was totally worth it. I love the ocean.

"Help, Mom! Quicksand!"

On Sunday morning we got up early and went to church in Ben and Carrie's ward. Not sure how, but amazingly we all made it to 9AM church on time.  I don't miss the California traffic.

 After a wonderful Mother's Day lunch at my brother's house, Grandpa took our boys to the Huntington Library gardens.  I'm sad that I missed this, but Todd and I weren't feeling well so we stayed behind to take a much needed nap.

Later that evening, we attended Ben's final recital at USC. The performance was wonderful, and for his encore number, he played a Mother's Day song from the Primary Songbook. What a Mother's Day gift!

Next up: Disneyland!