California part 1 (April 2016)

Once again I'm months behind. Luckily I took a few trip notes when we went to CA so I can remember most of it!

We left for our California trip on Thursday, April 21st. Dan worked most of the day and then we drove to St. George for the night. Somewhere on I-15 half-way there we hit 100,000 miles on our car. We have made a lot of road trips on this car!

The drive itself was quite horrible. Ellie manages to get stomach bugs ALL the time so when I noticed she has some stomach troubles before we left I wasn't worried because it's so common for her. But on the drive to St. George we had to take an emergency poop stop on the side of the road along with an underwear/pants change (it was gross), and then right outside of Cedar City late at night Ellie threw up everywhere in the car. Twice. We found a Walmart and Dan ran in and bought upholstery cleaner and rolls of paper towels and we cleaned up right there in the parking lot (and threw away the library book she had been reading at the time). We rolled in to St. George very late with all the kids still awake.

Kevin, Malorie, Beck and Penny were already in St. George when we got there. They rented a house near the beach so we could sort of have a joint vacation and go to Disneyland together. But I'm pretty sure Ellie got Beck sick since he threw up the next day, whoops. All was fine after that.

On Friday morning we made the rest of the drive to Matt and Lisa's house. It was once again a very, very long drive with a lot of bathroom stops since Ellie was so paranoid about having another accident. When we got to the Fogt's, Alisa and Sierra and Katelyn were at a choir performance thing and so we hung out with Matt and the younger kids. In the evening I drove to Irvine to meet Alisa and watch the girls' choral concert. I wasn't expecting much but I was totally blown away! They perform in a group with kids, adults, and had Jenny Oaks Baker as a guest musician. She was amazing. It was just what I needed after a long day of travel.

On Saturday morning we hung around the house in the morning:

And then took Sierra and Katelyn with us to the beach mid-morning. We stopped to pick up sandwiched and then drove to Strands Beach. Somehow we missed the little funicular to take us down (but we took it back up at the end of the day!) and instead walked the many stairs down to the beach. But we saw a whale right by the shore as we were walking down, which was really cool. I laughed that I had looked for whales all over Hawaii the whole time we were there and never saw one, and just happened to see one right by the shore here in CA.

We played in the sand and water for hours and met Kevin and Mal there. Sierra and Katelyn buried Alta and Ellie:

While Beck kept hitting them with his water gun:

Olive was a total beach baby and could have played in the sand all day:

Where's Dan?

Oh, there he is:

That night we went out to Wahoo's with the Fogts for dinner.

On Sunday everyone went to 1:30 church, but Olive was in desperate need of a nap so I stayed home with her. Apparently I needed a nap too because I fell asleep for 2 1/2 hours! Besides church we spent all day at the Fogt's. These cousins have so much fun together:

On Monday the cousins played again all morning. Dan and Kevin really wanted to spear fish so Dan spent the morning researching the best places to go and then decided to go for a swim in Alisa's pool. The kids loved watching him swim around with his spear gun shooting pool toys. Weird Uncle Dan.

Dan and I and the girls drove down to meet Kevin and Mal at Thousand Steps Beach, supposedly a great place for spear fishing. It wasn't the easiest beach to access with kids and gear, but it was really pretty. The waves were also huge that day so diving was not going to happen, but we enjoyed playing there for a while. We wanted to have time to see the Marinos's new house so we left around lunch time. It was a loooong way up the steps carrying Olive, beach bag, and our cooler:

Dan had to go get the car and was lugging all his free diving stuff so I was by myself with the girls. Most of the people on the stairs were exercising, not going to the beach, and that lady I accidentally got in my picture ended up helping me carry some stuff near the end. Whew!

Dan and I had been craving good fish and knew there had to be places nearby so on the way to San Clemente we found Kawamata Seafood and had an amazing poke bowl. We got to Jamie's house and got the tour and relaxed there for a while waiting for the boys to get done with school.

We then headed back to the beach, this time Doheny beach I think, and met Alisa and the kids too. Eventually even Kevin and Mal made it but Beck and Penny were sleeping in the car so we didn't see as much of them. Kevin and Dan spent some time diving and being swept way down the beach each time, the kids all played, and Alisa, Jamie and I tried not to freeze on the beach. It was not warm! There was also a beached whale a ways down the beach but it's intestines had washed up all over and we happened to be right near some. They were kind of cool, and huge, and also very smelly.

We grabbed dinner afterwards and with 12 kids it was a little crazy!

We said good-bye to the Marinos family and headed back to the Fogt's house. We put the girls to bed and then got everything ready so we could head to Disneyland first thing in the morning!
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