Family Vacation to California

We had a great time on our family vacation this past month. It was kind of a spur of the moment trip for us. James needed to go to San Jose, California for his work and we decided it would be fun for the whole family to go with him this time. His work paid for our gas there and back and for the hotel for the week. So that was really nice! We stayed for a few extra days so we could go to Disneyland and see some more of California while we were there.

We left on Monday and drove all day to San Jose. The kids did a great job so the drive wasn't too bad. We had a meltdown around dinner time and again for the last few minutes of the drive but overall it wasn't too terrible.

We stayed at a Marriott Residence Inn in their Penthouse Suite so we had very comfortable living arrangements. We had a bedroom/bathroom upstairs overlooking the downstairs which had another bedroom/living room/kitchen/bathroom. They had complimentary breakfast and dinner at the hotel too. The kids loved the swimming pool the most! We spent most of our time there.

We went swimming in the pool every day. Most days we went in the morning, again after lunch and sometimes after dinner too. The kids loved it!

Tuesday we drove into San Francisco to see the sights there. We stopped by Lombard Street, which is famous for being so twisty. Here is a picture of James and the kids with Lombard Street in the background. You can see how steep and curvy it is.

Wednesday afternoon the kids and I headed out to Half Moon Bay. We wanted to go to a beach nearby and this one seemed the prettiest from the pictures I saw of it. It was beautiful and I'm so glad we chose to go there. We had the beach mostly to ourselves and had fun playing in the water and burying ourselves in the sand. I loved this picture of Darcy cheesing it for the camera.
No vacation would be complete without a muscle shot of the guys!

Darcy was a little afraid of the waves rolling in. I thought she might like them more if she knew they were coming and called to them. James snapped this picture of us calling to the waves to "come here". She still ran away once the waves got to us. But eventually she overcame her fear and loved the water.

Thursday night the kids just wanted to swim in the pool with Dad. He missed out on most of the pool time since we did it while he was at work. So we wanted to have some swim time with Dad there too.

Friday was James last day at work so we had to check out of that hotel at 1pm. So we packed up our stuff Friday morning and met James at about 2 pm when he got done with work. We drove to Santa Cruz where we spent the afternoon/evening. It was a cool place. They have a huge boardwalk with shops and a huge amusement park right on the beach. We didn't go on any rides since we were heading to Disneyland in a few days. But we played on the beach and saw the sea lions on the pier. For dinner we went to a pizza/pasta bar that was delicious. It was a nice restaurant but very kid friendly. They brought out a ball of pizza dough for each of the kids to play with. (Great idea by the way! It kept the kids entertained all night!) Then when we were almost finished with our meal all the staff did a show where they had a guy doing really amazing pizza throwing and everyone was dancing around the restaurant. It was really fun. I should have taken some pictures of it but I didn't think of it at the time.

After dinner we drove for a few hours down to San Luis Obispo where we stayed the night. In the morning we went swimming in the pool for a few hours. When it was time to check out of our hotel we headed to Pismo Beach for the afternoon. We were not alone in that idea. It was so crowded at that beach! But we still had a great time. We got a boogie board so the kids could try their hand at body surfing. They also really liked digging holes in the sand and running in the waves.

After having all the fun we could handle at the beach we headed down to Anaheim where we stayed that night. We were in a hotel just a couple of blocks away from Disneyland. It was very nice and had a great pool. So we swam a little that night and then again the next day.

Sunday we checked out of the hotel and went to my cousin house. Jen and Bob live about 20 minutes from Disneyland. We spent the afternoon visiting with them. Our kids had so much fun playing with their kids. We spent the night with their family and then headed to Disneyland in the morning.

Disneyland was awesome! We went on quite a few rides in the morning together. By about lunch time Cody and Darcy were hot and tired. So we called Jen and she came and picked them up and took them home for naps. Jen was a lifesaver! It was so nice to have her take the little ones so we could have fun with the older kids. Dallin and Shelby really loved going on the rides. I thought they might be too scared to do the big rides, but they weren't! We went on almost all of the big rides and quite a few other ones too.

I called Jen a few times throughout the afternoon to check on the kids. They both slept for about 4 hours! So they were very tired. When Cody woke up Jen asked him if he wanted to go back to Disneyland. He said, "No, it's hot there. I want to stay here and play with Jack." So Jen kept them until after dinner and rush hour and then brought them back to Disneyland. We met her at Downtown Disney which is outside the park. There is a Lego store there which lured us in. They have some amazing things built out of Legos. The kids loved the life sized Darth Vader that was built out of Legos. After the Lego Store we rode the Monorail back into Disneyland.
By this time it was getting dark and I realized we hadn't even taken a picture of our whole family together yet. So we had someone take it for us in front of the Castle. It was so dark the picture didn't turn out very well, but oh well. The shows they did at night were really cool. We watched Fantasmic, which is a show they do on the water and island. It was really cool. Then we saw the firework show as well. There were so many people there that night that it was very crowded and hard to get around. But we still enjoyed the shows and headed to the hotel after that. It was a great day but we were sure glad to get back to our hotel and rest!

The next day we swam in the pool again and then went to Jen's house to return her stroller and pick up the things we left at her house the day before. Then we drove to Las Vegas and stayed the night there. The next morning we headed home and arrived around 2 pm.

It was a great trip. The only negative was that we had a round of stomach flu hit most of us at one time or another. But luckily it usually hit during the night and ended around lunch time so it wasn't too terrible. I think we drove about 2,200 miles on our trip. I was worried Darcy would go crazy on the way home after so much driving but she did pretty well.

Below is a slideshow with some additional pictures from our trip.