4th of July

Happy 4th!  A wonderful neighbor organized a kid parade for the afternoon.  Lydia and her friends planned it for two days... Alex jumped on a baby tricycle about 2 minutes before (the difference between girls and boys).  The little girl in green was throwing out candy :)  There were about 10 kids in the parade and about 10 spectators... 

We had a family BBQ at my parents.  My brother and his family are living with them now and so my brother smoked his famous ribs, they are really good!

A little backyard firecrackers before we headed to Stenger to see the BIG fireworks

California road trip (part 2)

Disneyland!  Dave loves disneyland and always plans a great trip for us.  Alex's favorite ride was Star Tours, Lydia's was the Matterhorn or Space Mountain!  I love it all, and Dave does too.  My parents were willing to trek around with us for most of the morning, which was really fun.

We ate lunch at the Blue Bayou, it's a restaurant inside the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, and it's wonderful.  Calm, cool, dark... and mint juleps...yum!

At California Adventure we rode the Tower of Terror.  We didn't pay for the picture after, but we did take a picture of the picture :)  Alex is scared of heights, so this was a tough one for him.  Lydia barely screamed.  I, however, screamed the entire time.  

We also went to a princess lunch, and there are so many pictures I couldn't pick one.  It was fun to see all the princesses, and the food was really good too.  We stayed later and watched the water show "world of color".  I was taking a great picture of the kids when the announcer said that the show was going to start and both kids could care less about me from that point on :)  It was a cool show.

I know this picture is small, but this is what got us out to California.  My father's family has a big reunion every four years... this is the picture from the party.  I only know about half of the people, but they are all so nice and it's fun to meet so many great people.

After leaving California we went to Vegas and stayed at the Golden Nugget Hotel.  This is the giant golden nugget.  It's real, and was found in the dirt behind someone's trailer home.  He wanted to remain anonymous, it's a cool story.  The pool there was awesome, with waterfalls, a swirly slide, and a giant shark tank in the middle.  Unfortunately, it was also 115 degrees, so the pool was crowded and you didn't want to be anywhere else.

Finally, we stopped at Zion National Park, it was probably 113 degrees.. so we only did one hike.  It was the river walk, right before the narrows hike.  It was beautiful, and maybe we'd like to go again when it's about 80 degrees :)

That's the trip!  We had so much fun and I feel like we're much closer as a family now.  Now back to the real world.

California road trip!

We are back from an awesome road trip!  Dave and I realized that we didn't really like the driving part, but you can't beat seeing so many different things... so it's a good trade :)  I gave the kids millions of things to do, and snuck in their math books too just in case they said they were bored.

We first stopped in Pueblo and did the River Walk, it was beautiful!  No one was there, and we got to see little baby ducklings!

We drove to Albuquerque and spent our first night there.  We ate dinner at El Pinto, which is a HUGE restaurant that used to be a HUGE hacienda.  Very beautiful, this was the front porch.

The next day we visited the Grand Canyon, it's grand!  I still can't believe how big it is.  The closest thing I can compare it to is when you're at the top of a ski mountain, and you can see lots of mountains... but that doesn't even compare, it was remarkable!  We rented bikes and rode along the rim and it was really fun

Dave's grandma lives in Arizona, so we met up with her for a day.  Jaynie was visiting at the same time, so we got to see her too :)  We went to a place called Slide Rock, which is a river that has smooth rock that you can slide on, like a natural water slide.  Very fun, very slippery.  I fell and landed on my cheek so hard I was afraid I broke something.  That night we slept at my cousin, Jodi's, home.  It was awesome to see her.  So awesome that I forgot to take any pictures...

Tuesday we finally got to California.  We met the Rozeski's and my parents at the beach and had a great time exploring the tide pools and trying to body surf.  It was SO relaxing!