My 40th Birthday Trip

For my 40th birthday, we took a trip to California. Danny had a conference in Downtown LA and since my parents live somewhat close, we decided to go along and make a fun weekend of it. We flew out on Friday, March 6th. The kids loved going on the plane(except for Alyssa).

My niece was getting married in Arizona that day, so my parents were not at their house when we arrived. We grabbed a late lunch at Hometown Buffet and then made ourselves at home at Grandma and Grandpa's. The kids had fun exploring the toy cupboards.
On Saturday, we headed out fairly early to spend the day with Brian and Maryn and their family. Lydia had an activity with the other kids her age in her ward that she didn't want to miss out on. And since the activity involved going to an animal shelter, Ashley was super excited to go along. I went with them, as well. Ashley loved seeing the dogs. She wished that she could have actually touched the dogs, but there were rules against it at the shelter. We also saw the cats and got to get closer to them, but that wasn't nearly as exciting for her.

Later that afternoon, we supported Robbie at his basketball game. I think he had the largest cheer section there. The little kids mostly had fun climbing up the bleachers and eating the few snacks that we had brought.

That night, we went to Fuddruckers for dinner. We no longer have Fuddruckers in Utah, so it is always a treat for us to be able to go there when we go to California. We said goodbye to the Wheeler cousins after dinner and headed back to Grandma and Grandpa's. They had gotten back from Arizona a little earlier that afternoon and were still getting settled when we arrived.

On Sunday, we enjoyed the day with Grandma and Grandpa. We went to church with them and Danny and I enjoyed getting to sit together during Sacrament meeting for the first time in 2 years. Little did we know that that would be our last time attending church in 3 months. We spent the afternoon visiting and enjoying the toys at Grandma's house. I think the kids pulled out the musical instruments and put on a show for us like they normally do at Grandma's house. That evening, I drove Danny to his hotel in Downtown LA since he had meetings early the next day and we didn't want to fight early morning rush hour traffic.
On Monday, my birthday, I decided to take the kids to my happy place(the beach). Mom and Dad sat that excursion out since it gets harder and harder for them to sit at the beach as they get older. Plus, they had some plumbing problems with their sink on Sunday and had to wait for the plumber to arrive to fix it on Monday. We normally go to Ventura Beach, but I felt like exposing them to a little more of a tourist attraction and we headed to Santa Monica instead. They thought it was the coolest thing to see an amusement park on a peer over the water.

We started the day off by walking to the end of the peer. 

Alyssa bought a souvenir(a necklace) and we enjoyed the performers. They, of course, wanted to ride some rides, but I couldn't bring myself to pay $50 to let them go on 2 rides, so we walked out on the sand instead. It was a good choice. The beach was pretty empty because the weather wasn't exactly warm. But it was warm enough for the Utahn's to dip into the water. The kids played in the waves, dug for sand crabs, and played in the sand(and dug a big hole). 

 

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 I enjoyed watching them and just relaxing on the sand.

We left the beach in the early afternoon and picked Danny up from his conference. Then we headed back to meet up with Mom and Dad for a birthday dinner. We decided on a Chinese Buffet. We were well fed and got to enjoy some fun new things(like crab legs and crawfish and other fun seafood). We had no idea that this would be our last buffet experience for months. We headed back to Grandma and Grandpa's house after that for cake. They had ordered this ice cream cake from Baskin Robins and it was super good. I took Danny back to his hotel after dessert and getting the kids settled into bed for the night. 

On Tuesday, we had some time in the morning before our early afternoon flight. I had toyed with the idea of taking the girls to the temple that morning to do baptisms. But it was raining pretty heavily that morning and I was worried about driving in traffic in the rain and being able to fit it all in before our flight home. I decided against it (which I regretted a bit when the temple closed down the following week). Our flight home was uneventful. We used a whole bottle of hand sanitizer between the trip out and the trip back and we tried our best to limit the amount of handrail touching and other surface touching. We made it home around 7 pm and found everything as we left it at home. The kids were back at school the next day, and then within 24 hours, everything changed...