California Part I

So I finally have a minute I can start putting up some pictures from our trip!  There are too many, so I am going to have to break it up into a few posts.  I decided to start from the beginning, the first 2 days.  

We left on Sunday April 27th.  My parents and my brother Guy's family met at our house around 11:30.  I grilled up some hot dogs for everyone before we left while the boys packed the car.  We took 2 cars, our van and my parents car.  We all fit nicely.  My brothers van is old and has been unreliable, so this worked out better, and saved us money on gas.  Guy and Haley and their daughter Paige rode with us and their 2 boys, Parker and Miller, rode with my parents.  Both cars were equipped with dvd players so the kids were pretty happy. Here are the girls in the back of the van ready to go!

We drove to Mesquite on Sunday and stayed at the Oasis.  It was only $29.99/night, so we thought it well worth the money to break up the drive, and Mesquite was exactly half way within like 20 miles.  It wasn't the nicest hotel, but it wasn't bad.  The rooms were all outdoor facing which was nice not to have to walk through a smokey casino.  The kids watched movies the whole way, and Josh and Guy sat in the middle row...playing World of Warcraft.  Josh brought both his laptops and connected them and had a wireless connection to the internet that worked most of the way there.  Me and Haley sat in the front (I drove) and visited the whole way.

We decided to check out the beautiful pool.  The kids were sooo excited.  It looked great, it was 85+ degrees out and there was a fun tube slide.  Only problem was, the water was FREEZING!  It took forever to get me and the kids in.  But once we were in, it wasn't so bad, we had a lot of fun!  I had only put my legs in and decided to let the slide push me the rest of the way in, so down I went and...BRRRR...I think my face pretty much explains it all.All the other kids were constantly going down the slide and jumping in, but Jenica was content just swimming around with her arm floaties!   She did finally go down the slide a few times before we left. 
Kaitlyn is definitely my brave one.  She was jumping in all by herself and we could not keep her away from the slide.  Check out her nice form!  ;)
Josh and Guy took advantage of the slide.  They were having a contest to see who could shoot out the farthest.  This is one of Josh's attempts.  But you had to watch out because they were flying!  Haley almost got her head taken off when Guy went down, she was at the bottom of the slide and had no idea he was on his way down.
We got changed and went to dinner at KFC.  I made the mistake and deciding to shower when I got back...I was FREEZING!  I had caught a chill from the water and I couldn't get rid of it...so between that and the blasting AC, it was no fun.  And letting the nasty chlorine and whatever else was in that pool dry on me and in my hair was a bad idea too.  My skin felt nasty and it took forever for my hair to actually feel wet in the shower...the water was just running off.  Nasty.  Here are the girls on Monday morning before we headed the rest of the way.  Jumping on the bed in Nana's room.  That's what Nana's are for.  Notice the mirror wall...these suckers ran the whole length of the room.

We made it all the way to Primm before we had to stop.  We stopped at the massive outlet mall and used the bathrooms and ate some lunch.  We didn't stop again until we were at the hotel.  We got the cars unloaded and headed over to downtown disney to check things out.  The girls were sooo excited to be so close to disneyland.  The first thing they noticed when we got there was the Mickey heads on the benches.  Our hotel was directly across the street from the gate, it was only a 5 minute walk (10 if you are dragging 5 kids..hehe).

We looked at everything in the World of Disney store...and the Hat trying on began.  


We took the girls to Build a bear and Kaitlyn picked a minnie shirt and ears for her Cindy Bear and Jenica picked a cute Minnie shirt for her Hello Kitty.  We all met for dinner at IHOP because kids eat free every night.  Good deal, right?  Even with the kids eating free our dinner was nearly $25.  They put it all on 1 check, the total was $111.  Who spends $111 at IHOP?  Holy cow!  Luckily that included over $40 in kids meals that ended up being free.  But they don't take that off until the end.  

My parents had the girls go to their room and they gave them a bunch of fun stuff!  Each of them got a very nice princess dress, crown, and light up wand and a spinny princess thing.  Jenica got Belle, Kailtyn got Cinderella, and Paige got Aurora.  

Ok, so that took a lot longer than a few minutes...lol...hopefully later today I can put up some more, but for now, this is what you get.  Sorry about the novel also, but this is my journal, so it's there for my benefit!  :)