Summer Vacation Week 1 (part 1)

So we're back??? :)

It has been a very long time, about 7 months, since our last post. Why the long break? Lots of reasons. I suppose facebook has made it easier to share what's going on in our lives. I also think after our summer vacation, it was a daunting task to go through all of our photos and pick the ones we want to share. We took over 1000 pictures during our 3 week trip!! Right or wrong, I didn't want to blog until I shared those pictures so it just got put off....for...7 months!

So we start with our epic summer vacation. Back in late July, we embarked on a 3 week journey to southern California. Each week, we spent time with different family and friends. My sister and her family lived just north of LA so we used them as our home base. We flew down on a direct flight from Anchorage and met Lisa's mom at the airport (who flew in from Ohio), rented an awesome gas guzzling Tahoe, and headed to Christin's for the night. The next morning, we headed down to San Diego to spend the first week with our long time friends, the Pekalas.

The first morning in our rented house we spent planning meals and then bought all the groceries...then BEACH TIME!!

This was the girls second time dipping their toes in the Pacific Ocean. Actually now that I think about it, it might be the first. They were just under 2 years old when we went to Hawaii and were freaked out by everything. It's possible we never got them to walk in the water! Well, they had no problem this time. They LOVE it!!

Some might recognize this spot, it's the beach just below Torey Pines Golf Course which is right up on that bluff. We'll go back someday so I can play it.

Happy (albeit VERY white) family!!

Love these close-ups of the girls running and playing in the water.

Katy was keeping one eye on the waves.

Run toward the waves....

RUN AWAY!!!

Monday morning we headed to the zoo! Great zoo with plenty to do and see.

Every place we went, we paid the extra money to rent a stroller. It was an extra $15 to $30 a day but SO worth it!

Taking a break in the shade with Jacob...

and Sydney

Panda!! There's a good story about how the 10 of us managed to jump to the front of the line that was probably 30 to 40 minutes long!

If you look close, you can see the panda between the girls.

The girls loved having their maps and figuring out where we were going to go next.

Highlight of the day? The gondola ride!! Katy and I had a gondola by ourselves and had a great time.

My little adrenaline junkie thought it was a roller coaster.

We learned that afternoon that the girls have a limit...and we would reach that limit almost every day. At some point every day the girls (well at least one of them) would have a meltdown. Minutes later, we found them like this. This was exhausting work for 4 year olds!

Next day, Sea World!!! Going into this vacation, this was the day that I was really looking forward to. I knew I was going to LOVE going to Sea World. I was right...what an amazing place.

The Shamu show was incredible! Lisa and even looked at each other at one point with our eyes welling up. I think my response as I wiped a tear from my eye was "stupid music". It was just done SO WELL!!

Couldn't believe how far they could flip the water up into the crowd. We managed to stay dry.

Grand finale!!

Bubbles for everybody!! Thanks Granny!

Dolphin show.

Excited about the turtles??

Alyssa cooling off in the shade while we figure out our next move.

Amy taking a turn entertaining the girls while we wait in line.

Taking a break to run out on the huge pillow.

By the end of the day, Katy was having a meltdown and eventually fell asleep and missed out on one of the orcas swimming in the holding tank. Alyssa got a front row view! Pretty amazing!

Whew that's a lot of pictures just for the first 3 full days of our 25 day vacation!!! See what I mean when I say it's a daunting task!

It's good to be back and sorry for the delay. I will resume the first week of our summer vacation very soon...sooner than 7 months!!