California for Spring Break

For Spring Break this year, we took a trip to California, mostly to see family, but we did some other fun things along the way. We broke the drive down there up between 2 days and stayed with my sister's family in Henderson. Christy had a meeting from about 7-8, so we decided to kill some time in Henderson getting dinner and dessert. We ended up at a BBQ restaurant and ordered way too much food, especially Alyssa. We didn't want to carry the leftovers along with us, so we stuffed ourselves so full. Alyssa was the only one that ended up taking food home. Even though we were pretty full, the kids still had room for ice cream, so we stopped at Ben and Jerry's(we missed free cone day by exactly one week, by the way).

 Tyler had the best chocolatey mustache and beard, so I had to take a picture. I think we embarrassed him a little when we all laughed at it and he asked me to wipe it off as soon as I was done taking the picture. He kind of reminded me of Joker from Batman.

We got to Christy's house at the exact same time as her and had fun catching up with her and Dan and the kids before going to bed. They were up early for school, tennis, and work the next morning. We had planned to sleep in a little, but the sun comes up at like 5:30am in Vegas, so we were all up by 6:30. We took the time to shower and let the kids play a little in their backyard, including picking some lemons off of their tree, and then headed over to Green Valley Casino for a breakfast buffet. The best part about it was how the boys eyes widened at the sight of all of those "arcade games." We had to explain to them that it was an arcade for only adults. The girls didn't like having to walk through the casino, but we all really enjoyed the breakfast. We aren't quite sure why their breakfast spread included bread sticks, pizza, and tacos, but we enjoyed the other stuff.
After breakfast, we were off for Grandma and Grandpa Miner's house. We made it there around 2pm and the kids enjoyed an afternoon and evening of exploring Grandma's toys. We even got a nice musical serenade from the kids using Grandma's musical instruments.

I went up to the park with Alyssa before dinner so that she could do her track workout. She was supposed to do a workout every day of spring break so that she could stay in shape. I got to do them with her. I may have been more of a hindrance than a help since she is a much faster runner than I am. At least it helped me get my exercise in most of the days.
On Thursday, we were up at the crack of dawn to open up Disneyland Park. We made the mistake of offering the kids breakfast. This delayed our departure about 30 minutes which caused us to hit more traffic and get to Disneyland about an hour later than we wanted to. Lines were already pretty long, but we started the fast pass line up and line waiting and had a really fun, but tiring day. We got in the park around 8:45am and our kids actually lasted until 11pm. The girls would have made it to midnight, but we struggled to keep Camden awake for the final 45 minutes. We managed to ride everything that day that we wanted and some of the favorites twice. I think the kids favorite was Space Mountain and they probably would have loved to ride it a second time, but it was the longest line in the park and the fast passes ran out around 3pm. I didn't get very good pictures, but this is what I got.

It must have been bright that day because someone has their eyes closed in almost every picture. The kids were asleep within minutes of getting in the car and we rolled into Grandma and Grandpa's house around midnight. They had waited up for us which reminded me of my teenage days. :)
Friday was our rest day. We slept in, enjoyed more of Grandma's toys and games, and just enjoyed spending time with them. The girls got up on the roof in the evening to clean out their gutters and thought it was a lot of fun. They also picked a lot of lemons while we were there and made lemonade. We were glad for the down day. Alyssa and I even skipped the track workout. We needed it after such a long day at Disneyland.

Conference and Wheeler Cousins

On Saturday, we headed to Brian and Maryn's house to enjoy some cousin time and watch General Conference. They invited us to join them for breakfast and I'm sure our kids were so excited when they realized that they got donuts for breakfast(one of their family traditions for Conference). They also got to play Conference Bingo for prizes. I think the adults all got to listen to Conference better than usual since most of the kids disappeared upstairs to watch and we didn't have all the extra noise around us since they entertained each other so well. The weather was perfect, so the kids enjoyed playing outside in between the first 2 sessions.

These 3 boys claimed the trampoline for "the boys" and did not like when Alyssa invaded their territory.

In between the afternoon session and the priesthood session, we went to dinner at Fuddruckers(our request since there is no longer Fuddruckers in Utah and we miss it).

During priesthood session, Alyssa, Catherine, and Maryn made snickerdoodles while I took the rest of the kids over to the park. I also ran a little with Alyssa for her daily track workout.

We stayed until about 7:30 and then headed back to Grandma and Grandpa's to get a good nights rest for our drive home the next day.
On Sunday we were up and on the road shortly after 6. We didn't even bother getting the kids dressed, just loaded them and all of our stuff in the car and left. We stopped in Barstow for breakfast and got everyone(except Alyssa) dressed there. We listened to the first session of Conference by streaming through our phone. Our lunch stop didn't work out as well and we ended up having to stop as the second session was starting. In hindsight, this was probably a mistake. We probably should have skipped the stop and listened to Conference. We ate as quickly as possible. Danny and the girls finished first, so they got in the car as the first speaker was starting. The boys took a little longer, but finally finished and we were on our way. The traffic was heavy on the freeway and Danny was commenting about how the next few hours were not going to be fun if it was going to be like that all the way home. The car in front of us stopped quickly and we barely were able to stop in time, but fortunately we did. Unfortunately, the car behind us did not. We heard squealing tires and then we were forced forward. Danny swerved to avoid hitting the car in front of us and somehow managed to maneuver our car in between the car in front of us and the truck hauling a trailer to our right. I still don't know how we fit in that space without hitting any of them. We pulled off to the side with a car full of crying kids. Danny dealt with the people who hit us(their car hardly had a scratch on it), the police officer who finally responded to the accident(like 30 minutes later), and our insurance company. I calmed the kids down. We were all wearing seat belts and no one was injured, except Ashley having a little pain in her neck(mostly from the seat belt rubbing on it). There was a bigger accident not too far behind us(probably a chain reaction from our accident) that the officers responded to first, so we had to wait for them for awhile. After filling out a report with the officer, we were on our way. We tried to listen to Conference through it all, but it was quite difficult. I guess we will need to re listen to those talks. Our car is now in the shop being repaired. Not sure how long it will take, but we are grateful for insurance and that no one was hurt. We still made it home around 6:30, even with the delay.