California Trip Day 5: The Wedding

On Saturday we woke up early, packed up our room again, grabbed breakfast from the hotel and headed to the temple.  We dropped the boys off at the Hazy's home first where Chris's aunt and uncle had offered to watch the kids for us. 

They brought the boys to the temple for pictures after.

Todd, Jill and Paul

the Bride and Groom

Aunt Chris and Steve

Lori and Marissa

Karissa and Peter

The Hazy siblings

 The next few pictures were taken at the reception that night.

the cake

dinner for the kids

the amazing table settings

The first dance

We had to leave the reception early because the boys were tired and we still had an hour drive to our hotel for that night and we had to get up early to catch our flight the next morning.

All in all, we had an amazing California trip.  As exhausting and expensive as it was, I am so glad we were able to make those memories with the kids.

California Trip Day 4

 This first picture kills me.  I saw Chris jump out of bed and grab the camera and this is what he was snapping a picture of.  Apparently we like it too cold in our room at night... haha our little shepherd boy.

 We packed up our room and got checked out, grabbed some breakfast and then headed to the airport to pick up Marissa on our way down to Laguna Beach again to hang out with Steve and Lori for a couple hours.
Cody was excited to get to show Steve how to catch sand crabs, even though Steve spent hours catching them with his kids years ago.

 We had access to some of the beach toys that were at the Laguna house that day so Cody got to body board a little even.

Trying to build a sand castle

 Marissa and Lori headed up to Santa Monica for the rehearsal dinner for the wedding early so Marissa could fulfill her bridesmaid responsibilities and we finished up at the beach and gave Cade a nap.
The dinner was at a restaurant on the beach in Santa Monica, it was so pretty.  Chris was a sport and as soon as dinner had been served he took the kids down on the beach while I sat and chatted with his family :)

Aunt Jill and Uncle Paul Henneman

Showing off the name cards... he thought it was AWESOME that he had his own.

 

We had to leave as it was getting dark and as the kids attention span was diminishing so we weren't able to stay for the entire program after dinner.

Both kids fell asleep on the way to the hotel that night, which was in Universal City.

  

Funny story:
On our way to the hotel I asked Chris to stop at Walmart so I could get some nylons and some milk for the boys for in the morning.  Our navigation system took us to the closest Walmart on the way which happened to be in Crenshaw Blvd.  Now, I didn't have any idea where that was but I did know that Crenshaw Heights was the high school on the movie Bring It On.  I mentioned that to Chris but he was sure it was a made up high school.  Before we knew it all the buildings had bars on the windows and doors and we started to get nervous.  The navigation system said that the Walmart was .1 miles away but we couldn't see it anywhere and then all the sudden we saw it... in a MALL!  It was an old JC Penney or something.  Chris would have gone in but I wasn't going to let him pick out my nylons and then I am sitting out in the car by myself with the kids asleep so I ran in quickly.  There home goods were on the lower level and I had to take the escalator to the groceries on the second level.  And had I needed to I could have walked out of the Walmart directly into the mall!
It was insane, I had never seen anything like that before.

California Trip day 3

 Day 3 of our trip was Cody's birthday.  We had kept it a secret from him that we were going to go to Disneyland on his birthday so he had no idea.  We had told him we were going to the beach for his birthday, so he was happy.
The night before we asked him what he wanted to do the next day since it would be his birthday and he said, "Let's go somewhere really fun... like Chuck E Cheese, but don't tell Cade.  It can be a surprise."  :)

The night before we also bought him a new Nike shirt that he is wearing in all these pictures and asked him that was okay for his birthday present, and he was so excited.  It made me feel good.

We aren't die-hard Disneylanders so we took our time in then morning.  We had breakfast downstairs at the restaurant in our hotel where Cody had his birthday (pan)cakes.   

 After breakfast we ran back up to the room to grab Cody's other birthday present, a ninjago watch.  Then we jumped on the shuttle to the park. 

 There was an intercom system on the bus that mentioned that we were almost to Disneyland a couple times but Cody never picked up on it.

It took all the way up until we were buying our tickets for him to put it together.  When I asked him where we were, he said Mickey Mouse, so I asked where Mickey Mouse lived and he said, "California" and then it clicked and he sheepishly said, "Disneyland??"

Chris volunteered to be the picture taker for the day so that I could be in some of the pictures with the boys, which was really nice. 

 We headed straight to the rockets where it was just going to be Cody and I but Cade decided he wanted to go as he saw us getting closer.  He loved driving the rocket.

 Then we went over to Buzz Lightyear because Cody loved it 3 years ago when we went so we knew it would be one Cade would enjoy.

 It was dark, so he was hesitant and would jump every time something behind him made a noise but he didn't cry so we went again.

Cody was pretty intense both times.

 Waiting in line for the submarine ride/nemo.   Chris and I didn't remember the ride being as scary as it was.  Cade wasn't a fan.

 

After the submarine, we split up.  Chris took Cade back to the hotel to take a nap and Cody and I hit up a few big kid rides that Cade can't go on and Chris won't go on.  

First was Space Moutnain.  The line wasn't very long when we started but then the line was down for 15 minutes so it took about 35 minutes for us to get on the actual ride. 

 He was so excited once he saw inside. 

He was grunting and grabbing my leg during the entire ride so afrer the ride I asked him if he had fun and he said, "Yes, but I am NEVER going on that ride EVER again!"

We walked over to Indiana Jones which is one of my favorite rides but Cody was about 1/4 inch too short so we headed over to Tarzan's tree house instead. 

 Then we headed to Pirates of the Caribbean.  He really liked that one and I had him convinced that the Jack Sparrow's were real so he thought that was super cool.  

 We walked over to Splash Mountain and noticed that the line was really short so we jumped in at the end and asked why it was so short and the people in front of us said the ride had been down for about 20 minutes but they had just come out and said it shouldn't be more than 15 more minutes so we decided to stick it out, mostly because the kid in front of us was Cody's age so they were able to hang out together while we waited. 

 It took us 35 minutes to get on the ride which I will take any day on Splash Mountain. 

 

At the beginning Cody was sitting right in front of me but I noticed he was sliding around a lot so I moved back with me.  

 I am really glad I did because he was scared out of his mind when we went down...

 We grabbed a quick $20 sandwich for lunch and then started to make out way over to Thunder Mountain.  The line went so fast, I think we waited like 15 minutes total. 

Thunder Mountain turned out to be his favorite ride because it was a roller coaster and it wasn't dark.  I think he would have gone 10 times if I had let him. 

 

I wanted to take him on the Matterhorn too but the ride was closed to we headed to the bathroom which is where Chris and Cade met back up with us.

 Once we were all back together we went over to the kid rides again and tried to go on the carousel but as soon as the boys got one they said it was having technical difficulties so they had to get back off, but not before they posed for the camera a bit.

Our last ride all together was on Dumbo, which Cade really liked because once again he got to drive.

Then we walked over to find Mickey Mouse in his house.  Last time it took us at least an hour to get in to see him, this time it took about 10 minutes.

We were going to wait for the parade but we decided to ditch out early, go grab some dinner and get the kids in bed.
All in all it was a great day at Disneyland, even though Cody asked about 4 times when we were going to go back to the beach.