Road Trip To California - Part 2

After spending a week in Los Angeles we headed to Monterey.  Monterey is absolutely gorgeous.  I would love to live there.  It was green, and warm, and the beaches were beautiful.

We stayed with Lisa, a college x-country teammate of mine and Floyd's, and her family.  Her kids are the same ages as Selena and Allie and all the kids had a lot of fun together.  They are stationed in Monteray for 18 months.  Every time they move I always want to go visit, but traveling with kids always seems expensive and stressful to me, but this time it seemed like a good way to visit both them and my brother, and save money by driving.

We visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which was another really cool aquarium.  The kids especially liked the jellyfish exhibit.   We also got to see the penguins walking from the employee only area, to their exhibit.

Other than that we mostly just hung out at the beaches and ogled the fancy houses.  Lisa took me on a run along the beach which was amazing.  A long run with a good friend is pretty much my favorite thing in the world to do, so I was happy.

Floyd got to run with Dan (Lisa's husband) along the beach, and on the Pebble Beach golf course.  I think he would have rather golfed the course, but running on it was the next best thing.   He did get to play golf too, just not at Pebble Beach.

Road Trip To California - Part 1

For the end of March we took a 2 week road trip to California.  Last time we road tripped to California we went in a motor home, towing our car, and drove through the night.  Which was okay for the girls who were almost 3 and almost 5. But our dog did not like the motor home and was freaking out, which made it quite stressful till we finally put her in the car we were towing.

This time we drove in our Mazda 5.  We did a 9 hour drive to Redding, and stayed in a hotel overnight, and then did another 9 hour drive to Los Angeles.  Culver City to be exact, and stayed with my brother and his family for a week.  Then we drove about 6 hours to Monterey and stayed with our friend from college and her family for four nights, and did a 14 hour drive from Monterey back to Everett.

The trip was surprisingly smooth.  I want to say that mobile devices are awesome for road trips.  We had music, movies, tv shows, books on tape, games, and regular books all available and it made the trip pretty reasonable.

In Los Angeles we stayed with my brother which was so fun.  The kids had fun playing with their cousins.  The only bad part, was our timing, as they had just moved a few days before we arrived so their house was full of boxes, and I am sure it was a bit stressful for them.

We did Disneyland for a day (no California Adventure), the Aquarium of the Pacific, visited the beaches quite a bit, and just hung out and let the cousins play.  My nephews are the cutest boys ever.

Disneyland was of course wonderful.  I am kind of regretting not doing more than one day, but on the other hand it was crowded and pretty exhausting.  Allie just met the height requirement, which was great, because it meant we could all go on Splash Mountain and Space Mountain.  I was worried about the kids being scared, but they loved it.  They are kind of crazy.

We spent some time going on rides with the cousins, and we even met up with Lisa and her family (who we were staying with in Monterey), who also happened to be at Disneyland the same day as us.

The Aquarium of the Pacific was cool.  Their deep water exhibit was pretty awesome.  There are some weird creatures way down deep.  They also had some birds to feed, and rays to pet, and even had a penguin named Floyd. :)  

The beaches were fun, and probably the most relaxing, as the kids can spend hours digging in the sand and you don't have to deal with crowds.

We visited muscle beach in Santa Monica where Selena impressed the guys with her rope climbing skills.

Lost Her First Tooth

Selena lost her first tooth!  She is seven and has spent almost two full school years watching all her schoolmates lose teeth, but all her teeth were staying stubbornly in her mouth.  She had even sewn herself a tooth pillow all by herself in anticipation of the event.

She lost it while we were on vacation, staying at my friends house.  It was really loose and I asked if she wanted me to pull it.  I tried, but it was giving me the heeby jeebies so I set Floyd to the task.  He pulled it out, and stuck it in a plastic bag.

I decided I needed to wash it.  My friend stopped me and told me to go to the bathroom and plug the sink. While I headed to the bathroom she was telling us about how she lost her daughter's first tooth by trying to wash it and it went down the drain.  Of course while she is telling the story I am rinsing the tooth.  It slips from my hand.  I panic and attempt to turn off the water, and hit the handle that was clogging the drain, which opens the drain, and the tooth goes down the sink.  It was April 1st so Floyd was hoping me losing it was an April Fool's joke, sadly it was not.

Luckily Selena is handles disappointing situations extremely well and assured me that a nice note to the tooth fairy would be just as good as the actual tooth, and she was right. :)

She also lost her second tooth a few weeks later.  This time she pulled it out herself, and I was not allowed to touch it. It stayed in ziplock so it could be safely put under her pillow.