And The Fun Must End

My Aunt Jamie was kind enough to plan, organize and cook dinner for all 99 of us each night.  She kept telling us she loved it, so I hope it was true.  We didn't all fit into one room, but we tried.

We all got to be together to celebrate my Mom's 65th birthday.  Don't let the candles confuse you.  Aunt Jamie had a 3 & a 2 back to back to make the 5.

It was a wonderful Family Reunion.  I just wished I'd had more time to visit with all my relatives.  Somehow taking care of my own kids gets in the way.

Sunday finally arrived and it was time to pack up and head out.  I had one last childhood memory I wanted to relive.  We drove up the coast to see the Newport Beach Temple

I love the unique mission style architecture on this temple.  It is small but beautiful and you can see it really well from the freeway.

We then took a side trip to Balboa Island

We even rode the Ferry across.

As I was telling my kids how I rode this Ferry so many times as a teenager and we took pictures the cute family next to us asked their dad if they could take pictures.  He told them they rode it twice a week, there was no need for pictures yet.  We all got a good laugh out of that one.

As a young teenager I got to go to Balboa Island a couple of times with a family in our ward to help babysit their kids.  And we even had a Young Women's overnighter at their beach house.  It was on that trip we went roller skating and I fell and broke my wrist for the second time in my life.  I haven't roller skated since.

I told the kids about my favorite treat and they all wanted to try one.  So we stopped for . . .

Balboa Bars!  Best hand dipped ice cream bars you can get.  Jessica rolled hers in Oreos.  Ashley's was rolled in chocolate sprinkles.  John got an everything bar along with Mark.  And I enjoyed mine rolled in toffee along with my mom.  Why do all my memories involve food, hmm?

After that we headed out with an overnight stop in Vegas.  Then the longest six hour drive of the whole trip.  But we made it home safe and sound and loved all the memories we made as a family.

Beach Days

The whole reason for our California Trip was for our Family Reunion in Oceanside.  We stayed at a hotel right on the Marina.  Any time of day we could sit and watch the boats and sailboats go in and out of the Marina.  It had a beautiful view.  But we did have to drive to the other side of the Marina to get to the beach.  Unless you were like my cousin Ryan who swam across the Marina on his surf board!  The last time I enjoyed a true beach day was when I was 16 before we moved away from California.  I miss the beach.  I love the smell of the salt water, the sound of the waves, even the taste of the ocean water.  It was fun introducing my kids to the Ocean.

And I think the love it as much as I do now.

I could lay on the beach all day long

Mark on the other hand could not lay on the beach all day long

My kids had so much fun playing with their cousins on the beach

And I had just as much fun playing with my cousins in the water.  We had a blast jumping and diving around the waves.

And we even got Grandma on the beach for a little bit of the day.

And a trip to California would not be complete if we didn't go to a hole in the wall Mexican restaurant at least once.  We enjoyed a birthday lunch with my mom at Senor Panchos.

Disneyland Day Four

It is hard to believe, but yes, we really went to the Park four days in a row.  Disney was having a promotion and if you bought 3 day passes you got 5 day passes.  We were really glad for the extra days after having day 3 be so crowded.  We had a Magic Morning pass, so we were there by 7am to get in early.  We hit some of our favorite rides again.

This picture of Ashley tells it all.  We all felt like this, but we knew it was our last chance in a very long time to enjoy Disneyland, so we pushed through the tiredness to enjoy six more hours of Disneyland and DCA.  And we squeezed in another frozen banana along the way.  I love frozen bananas from Disneyland!

After finally leaving the parks for good we stopped in Tustin to have lunch.  My family was living in Tustin when I was born and we stayed there until I was five years old.  We drove by the house we lived in while we were there.

I would have never found it except for our trusty GPS.  The whole street looks nicer than it did when we lived there.  The neighborhood has been kept up really nicely.

I fell in love with Del Taco as a child.  This was the only fast food we ever had.  We had Tuesday Tacos because my mom was Primary President back when we had Primary every Tuesday afternoon so we'd get Tacos afterwards because they were cheap on Tuesdays.  Oh, the silly things you remember as a child.

And then we drove down the Coast and finally arrived at this.

This was our view out our hotel room in Oceanside.  I miss this view.

It doesn't get much better than this.  We could walk out our back door and stroll along this path.  There were 99 of us at this Family Reunion so the whole wing of the hotel was our relatives.  We all kept our back doors open so we could walk down and visit each other and enjoy the ocean breezes.

Yes it was crazy that almost all of us live in the same city in Utah and we all drove to California to be together, but I loved it.  I could finally relax!

And boy was I ready to relax!

Disneyland Day Three

By Day Three we were all a bit tired.  We got to the park much later than we had originally planned.  But we finally took the time to take the traditional picture in front of Mickey.

We should have guessed it was going to be crowded that day since we could not take a picture without a bunch of strangers in the picture.  And I love the look on John's face.  Do you think he is getting tired?

After riding on a couple of rides we met up with one of my mission companions in Downtown Disney.

Suttles (I still can't call her by her first name) was one of my favorite companions.  I had been out six months and spent the whole time in Worcester, MA (big ugly city) when I was transferred to Pittsfield (beautiful typical New England town).  We got along great and we had a fabulous time as comps.  Thanks again to Facebook we have reconnected after almost 20 years.  We had lost touch after we came home.  We tried to get together with Moody (Spanish Sister that we had shared an apartment with at different times), but we were sad she could not join us.  After introducing her to my family, Mark was kind enough to take the kids so Suttles and I could have a great lunch and visit without the kids distracting.  It was a wonderful, peaceful two hours for me.  It makes me wish we could visit more often.

While I was busy Mark took the kids shopping so they could spend their hard earned cash.  Jessica got her ears and John got this

They also met up with Pluto

After we joined back up we tried to ride some rides.  By this point in the afternoon even the wheelchair lines were long. The Park was more crowded than we had seen it the other days.  Pirates had 15 groups of people waiting outside the ride to get in through the wheelchair entrance.  So we decided to call it a day. Headed back to the hotel to do laundry, swim in the pool and pack up the bags.  I think we were all sound asleep by 9pm that night.

Disneyland Day Two

Day Two was dedicated to Disney's California Adventure (or as the locals call it DCA).  We had realized after looking through the wheelchair flyer that DCA is set up so the wheelchairs do not cut to the front of the line.  Disney got smart and made all the queues large enough for wheelchairs.  So we were glad we had purchased RideMax online before we left.  We had already mapped out DCA with what we wanted to ride.  And it gave us great pointers on how to make the best use of FastPasses to save the most time in lines.  I think at one time we had 4 FastPasses out waiting to be used.

We didn't make it to the park as early as we had hoped, so we started slowly at Animation where the kids had fun with the interactive displays

And we all enjoyed Turtle Talk with Crush!

The girls enjoyed the Jumpin' Jellyfish.  But John passed on this ride.  We had been so excited that all the kids were tall enough to ride all the rides this trip. But I forgot to think about or consider John's fears.  After going on Thunder Mountain the first day he quizzed us before every ride.  He wanted to know if it went fast, had drops, went up, went around, etc, etc, etc.  I lost patience with his quizzes when he didn't want to go on Toy Story Mania because he thought it was scary.  In the end Toy Story was one of his favorite rides.  It is definitely worth waiting in the long line for it.  We all loved it.

There were times we weren't sure "happily ever after" would occur, but we survived.  Our picture taking slowed down when my mom was no longer with us to take family pictures.

Jessica made up for John's fears when she decided she was brave and loved the fast rides.  Her and I made it on California Screamin' Roller Coaster twice.  But why does this ride make me dizzy now that I'm old?  She had also been afraid of Tower of Terror, but in the end loved it and wanted to go more.

John and Ashley relaxed in the wheelchair while they waited for us.  It was faster for us to walk onto Screamin' using our fastpass than it was to take the wheelchair.

We finished the night with Melissa, Will and Kaylee joining us for the Light Parade.  Melissa and Will have Season Passes since they live about 30 minutes away, so it was fun connecting up with them for part of the time.

Disneyland Day One

Even though this trip was all about the Family Reunion in Oceanside I think Disneyland took Center Stage.  Our kids had so much fun going on You Tube and watching all the rides they could ride on in Disneyland.  Finally the much anticipated day arrived.

Here we are waiting in line with my Mom.  She joined us for the first day in the Park.  After that she headed to San Diego to spend time at Sea World with some of my siblings while we stayed at Disneyland.  We got up bright and early and were in line long before the gates opened.

Our first ride was Finding Nemo Submarines.  We had heard the line got long fast so we headed there first.  But because of my bad foot we rented a wheelchair which made it so we skipped the line and went right to the front.  John was fascinated from the second we got in the ride.  Growing up near Disneyland I went on the old submarine ride many a times and I must say they managed to update it and make it really great.

While Jessica, my mom, and I went on Matterhorn, Mark took John and Ashley on Alice in Wonderland and we made it off Matterhorn in time to catch them at the Tea Cups.

I love almost all rides at Disneyland, but round and round rides do not love me.  So we let these three enjoy the Tea Cups by themselves.

Once we realized the joy of the "wheelchair" lines we no longer rushed to go on the big rides and took our time on some of the smaller rides.  My mom always loved the Steamboat ride so we took the time to ride it when we were by the dock.

Mid day my sister's husband, Will, and their little girl, Kaylee, joined us in the park.  On the Haunted Mansion ride there was a moment the ride stopped for some reason and I clicked this photo.

Will enjoyed the "wheelchair" line with us on Splash Mountain.  We were glad Grandma was there to watch the two little ones so we could all enjoy it.  It is hard to tell, but Ashley and Jessica are behind Will in the log.  I think he enjoyed the ride.  Will definitely got the wettest.

Jessica and Mark had fun trying on Hats while I waited with Ashley and John for the Jedi Training Show.  Jessica had the most spending money of all of us thanks to her babysitting.  But in the end she choose a simple hat.

We finished the first day on Autopia, which did not have a wheelchair line.  The children had become spoiled and could not believe we had to wait in line like the rest of the world.

But we did stay in the park to watch the Fireworks with the rest of the living world.  We had seen them from our Hotel room the night before but wanted to see them up close in the park.  By this point Grandma had given up on us and went back to the room hours before.  It was crazy and crowded but so much fun.  In an effort not to loose the children John and Ashley got to ride in the wheelchair down Main Street and I walked behind.  Otherwise I'm sure we would have lost one of them in the wall to wall people.