Disneyland!

We just got back from a fabulous vacation to southern California. We flew out last Tuesday afternoon. We flew down with Randy's brother Jason and his family, his sister Kristin and her family, and her friends family. Randy's brother Scott and his family met us down there (they drove), so we had quite a large group. The flight down was great. We flew into Long Beach, rented a car, and drove about 30 minutes to Anaheim where we stayed.

Nathan in front of the airplane, we flew Jet Blue, which he thought was he plane's name.

We spent all day on Wednesday at Disneyland and California Adventure. It was so fun. I hadn't been to Disneyland in 15 years and Randy and my boys had never been. We had an awesome day, the lines were not long and the weather was great. The kids, even Adam, did great even thought we had a really long day. The highlight of the day was the Pixar Parade in California Adventure, all of my kids favorite movies came to life, including Finding Nemo, Cars, and Toy Story. The boys also got to have their picture taken with Lightning McQueen and Mater.Ready to go, riding the shuttle into the park.

We spent Thursday winding down by going to Newport Beach, visiting Trader Joes (it wouldn't be a vacation without bring home some edible souvenirs), and going to an Angels game. It was an awesome day for the beach. It was hot and the water felt so good. There were some good waves, Jacob and his cousin Isaac loved playing in the waves. The littler kids loved playing in the sand, all Adam wanted to do was roll around in it. We put the kids to bed early in preparation for an even longer day at Disneyland on Friday.

We got up early Friday morning and were at the park right around 8 am. It was an awesome time to be there, there were no lines for anything and we were able to do most of what we wanted to do within a few hours. After a fun morning at Disneyland we went over to California Adventure for the afternoon. One of the highlights for me was Soring Over California. It was unbelievable, that is the closest thing to flying you can get. We went back over to Disneyland for the parade in the evening. We didn't really get to see much of it because of where we were sitting and the unbelievable crowds. There were no crowds all day so I figured the huge crowd was just everyone gathered for the parade, but when we went to try to ride some more rides the lines were crazy long. For some reason the park really filled up in the evening, some much that it wasn't even fun anymore. We were going to try to stay for the light show, but crowd was so huge and the kids were tired. They actually started begging to go home, so we left. We didn't feel bad about leaving early, we had an awesome day. It was hard for me to be there and not go on any fun rides, I LOVE roller coasters! And couldn't go on a single one, what being 29 weeks pregnant. But it was okay. I held up remarkable well with all the walking too.

Jacob trying to pull the sward from the stone


With cousins and the Bears from Brother Bear

On Saturday we drove about 40 minutes to Riverside to visit my Grandma. It was fun to see her and my uncles and cousins I haven't seen in a long time. It was also nice to have a relaxing day.

Grandma Vicky with her Great Grandsons, Jacob, Ryan, Adam, and Nathan

Me and my cousins, Corri, Matt, and Jessica

Matt and his family, Ryan and Jessica

We left very early Sunday morning. Our plane left Long Beach at 7 am. We discovered on the flight home that Nathan gets air sick just like his mom. There was a storm in Salt Lake, and a ton of turbulence. By some miracle Adam, who had been very wiggly the whole flight, fell asleep right before it got too rough. He slept in my lap while I struggled to keep my breakfast down and Randy helped Nathan use the barf bag. It was not fun, that was by far the worst part of the whole trip. We had a great vacation, but were glad to be home.

What do you do with tons of free fruit?

Can it! I have some very generous neighbors, who had some very plentiful fruit trees this year. I got free peaches, pears, and more apples than I have ever seen in one place. I am on a big food storage kick, so instead of letting all this fruit go to waste I tried my hand at some serious canning. It took me about a week, but I made 7 pints of peach jam, 7 quarts of pears, 7 quarts of apple pie filling, and about 20 quarts of apple sauce. I took some of my apple sauce and tried apple butter. I have never really had apple butter, so I wasn't at all sure what I was doing, but I followed the recipe and it turned out fabulous, I love it.

Jacob was an awesome helper making apple sauce.