Three week trip - [week 3: California]

After being away from John for 2 weeks, we were all so anxious and excited to see him!  We met him in California and stayed for a week in San Clemente, at John's families condo.  We invited Tal and Alison to join us.  It worked out great - Tal and John drove from Arizona together and Alison and I drove from Utah. 

excited kids and an excited dad!..(I think he was more excited to see them than me ;))

I love San Clemente.  This is on the balcony of the condo - literally right on the beach.  It was perfect to sit out there each night and watch the sun go down.  The kids loved watching for dolphins and watching the train go by.

We hit the beach up right away the next day.  John took the kids out a lot while I stayed with Remmy on the beach and watched.

We packed lunches, a tent to shade Remmy, body boards, sand toys, and every thing else you can think of to keep us entertained.

John buried me in the sand and the kids thought it was really funny...so we buried them next.

There is a park right by the beach and condo that we played at a lot that week.  The nights were perfect there - not hot or cold...just right with a little wind.

Alison and Tal

After the kids went to bed each night, the adults would stay up and play Farkle.  I kid you not...one time I rolled six 5's....that NEVER happens.  We all were going crazy and I had to take a picture to document.

We went down to the pier and walked around..

On Wednesday we went to Sea World.  Neither John or I had ever been there before.  We loved it and stayed the entire day, from open until close.  I was curious to see how the kids would do with no place to nap, but they did great and each took a turn napping in the stroller.

My favorite was the dolphin show.  It was amazing how they can train them to do so many neat things...I sat in awe the whole show.  The Shamu show was good too - those killer whales are huge!  There was also a sea lion show that was hilarious.  And the kids loved the kiddie rides in Sesame Street land.

These pictures are all backwards...

This was at the end of the day..I wanted a quick shot of our family in front of the Sea World sign.  Everyone was happy and smiling (pictured below) and in .2 seconds that quickly changed...John sat on Brooklyn's finger and she started screaming (pictured above).

a rare moment we are all smiling and looking at the camera

These next few pictures crack me up - Jack and Brooklyn were so excited to get their picture taken with Grover and Elmo, but the second we got close to them Jake was terrified.  He screamed bloody murder.  He had a death grip on me and was trying to get away from them.  I couldn't stop laughing and kept trying to tell him that it was ok and that they were nice.  The second we had some distance between us and them Jake happily waved bye.

We saw lots of fish, sharks, turtles, ...all the sea life.

look at that scowl!  He get's it from the Mortensen side :)

On Friday we drove half an hour down to San Diego and walked around the temple.  It is such a beautiful temple and the kids had fun walking around.

Brooklyn took this picture of us - not bad for her first photo :)

We drove south a little more and found a fun beach for the kids to play.  We were really close to the water and it was making us a little nervous, so we didn't stay long and decided to try and find another beach.

We drove around and got lost for an hour and finally decided to head back to the beach by the condo.  We picked up burgers and fried and ate on the beach and spent the rest of the day there.  It was so fun watching John and the older kids play in the water while I sat on the beach and snuggled Remmy.  We had a great little family vacation and love going to San Clemente.