California Vacation!!!!

We just recently took a vacation up to Northern California to visit Chris' family and friends. Lots of this post will be a lot of boring details for journaling purposes so sorry if you get bored. Anyways, we left last Thursday morning, March 12, at 3:00 a.m. We left extra early thinking that the kids would sleep atleast 4 or 5 hours of the trip. WRONG!!! They only slept for 1 1/2 hours of the whole 10 hours! Luckily, they did AWESOME! They just sat in their carseat and played with some stuff that I packed for them. We bought a dvd player for them which was a life saver. I highly recommend this if anyone is going on a long trip! We were so surprised at how fast and easy the trip was. We first drove up to Grass Valley, Cali. and stayed with Chris' Aunt Debbie and Uncle Bill. Chris is also doing some cabinets for his other Aunt Rachelle and Uncle Denny in their "lake house." So he worked for a lot of the time with Rachelle on designing their kitchen and stuff, while I played with the kids and relaxed.
*Marine World*
We stayed up in Grass Valley until Saturday morning where we got up early and drove down to the Six Flags Marine World. It is kind of a cross between Sea World and Six Flags so there are animals and shows, mixed with roller coasters and rides. Chris' dad met us there and spent the whole day with us. We had so much fun spending time with him. Ashtyn held his hand the whole day walking from place to place.

Ashtyn loved this walrus. She couldn't wait to see it's "big long teeth." It was kind of funny though because you couldn't see the walrus swimming towards us(because of the mirky water) until it hit the glass. It scared us all! Then is started clicking it's teeth really loud which Ashtyn was scared of, too! *Shows*

We saw a few of the Animal Shows including the "Shouka the Whale" show, the Sea Lion show and the Dolphin Show. The kids loved to see the animals jumping out of the water.

She really liked this Airplane ride! She got to ride it all by herself and she could move it up and down.

Chris' Dad, Kevin, Chris and the kids just before the Whale show!

Chris and Ashtyn on the tea cups! It was making me dizzy just watching them go around and around!

More rides...

Here we are getting our picture taken with Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck.

I was so surprised that the kids weren't scared of the characters! Ashtyn just ran up and gave Bugs a big hug!

The day at Marine World was just a BLAST! We needed a little more time to see everything there, but we had so so so much fun! Just a little suggestion to anyone going to a theme park, take someone else with you! It is really hard to get pictures and handle kids and bags and everything else with just the two of us!

After we left Marine World, we drove into San Francisco! It is about an hour and a half away. We got to drive across the Bay Bridge. We could see Alcatraz which was so cool. It looks so much different than St. George. I absolutely loved seeing the different scenery. Aunt Rachelle and Uncle Denny live in SF with their two kids, Dennis who is 6, and Madeira who is 4. Ashtyn was really excited to meet her cousins. Chris' Dad and Aunt Cheryl came over too and Rachelle made us a really yummy dinner. We visited all night long, and stayed the night with them. Then, the next morning we got up and went to church for just sacrament meeting. Next, Rachelle took us to a place called the Discovery Museum.It is at the bottom of the Golden Gate Bride. It is a place just for kids. There are about 10 different buildings that each have a different theme with hands-on activities for the kids. Pics below!

*Discovery Museum*

There was a park in the middle of the buildings that had a "Ship" theme. So there was a boat and many other things for them to play on.

Ashtyn at the "look out"

This is where they could shovel the sand into the buckets.

This room was the music room. There were all kinds of different ways to make music. It was so loud, though!

This was the "Art" room. You could build with blocks, play with moon sand, add to the HUGE collage. Camden is trying to glue on some paper.....

Or you could finger paint on the windows. Asthyn was in Heaven. She was writing letters and shapes all over it! It was a great excuse to get messy!

We took a family picture in front of the Golden Gate Bridge as we were leaving but it didn't turn out. So here is one of just the bridge.

The Discover Museum was a blast. Ashtyn had so much fun playing with Dennis and Madeira. Thanks so much to Rachelle for showing us a great time!

Next, we drove from the Museum to Chris' Aunt Maria and Uncle Johnny's house. We stayed with them for the rest of the trip. We got to their house and tried to rest a little before we went out to dinner for yummy pizza! The next day we went and visited with Chris' best friend Ben. Then came back to Maria's and took a much needed nap! Later, Maria cooked us some really yummy stir fry! We spent the night just hanging out with Chris' dad and family. The next day we got up and went to a place called "The Jungle" It is a place for kids to just run around and play. The best way to describe it is like a gigantic Mcdonalds play place. Sort of! It is sort of a huge obstacle course,too. They also have tons of video games that you win tickets and get prizes. Chris liked this part, he played a basketball game a ton of times so he won 400 tickets. Then Ashtyn picked lots of prizes.I forgot my camera so I didn't get any pictures, but it was so dark they probably wouldn't have turned out anyway. After "The Jungle" we went to lunch and then to cousin John's baseball game. He plays on his highschool varsity team so we went to watch him play, which was fun. After that, we went to dinner with Chris' friend Ben and Shane at Applebee's. From there we started our journey home! We decided that we wanted to try and drive all night. So we left there at 8:00 p.m. The kids fell asleep about an hour into it. They slept 9 out of the 10 hour drive! Can you believe that? We were amazed! Every now and then they would fuss while trying to get comfortable, then just go right back to sleep. It was really difficult for us to stay awake and drive, but well worth it.We arrived home at 6:00 a.m. and went straight to bed! The trip was so much fun I can't even tell you how much fun we had. We were completely exhausted the entire time, but still had so much fun. It was so great to see Chris' family since we hardly ever see them. It had been almost 2 years for most of them. Thanks so much to everybody for everything! I don't think we paid for anything, cause everyone paid for us! Thanks so so much and love ya tonz! We hope we will be able to go back soon!