How many days?

I bought tickets to our trip to Disneyland last night, we are going on December 19-22 (I think). It is a planned trip of Michael and his soon to be wife, Becca. We were invited a few weeks or months ago. We are really looking forward to this trip. We haven't ever been able to take our kids anywhere fun, other than the public swimming pool (and I am still convinced that if they don't go anywhere else they might never know what they are missing).

Anyways Michael and Becca invited me a while back and I said sure works going good I've got some vacation time saved up, why not? They, Mike and Becca, are pretty regulars at Disneyland but it has been many many years since I have been and I thought what the heck, it will probably be tons of fun with them and the two kids. So this was our original plan just the 5 of us. Well someone got this great idea, why don't we invite Mom and Dad, then when the kids get tired the "Grandparents" can take them back to the hotel and the "adults" can stay and enjoy some more fun later in the evening. So our trip grew to 7. Now what about Eric, the only other child living at home (oh no I just had a terrible thought, WHEN DOES DANIEL COME HOME FROM PANAMA? I gotta call my mom tomorrow and confirm that either he won't be home yet or we won't be missing him come home while we are at Disneyland) so Eric is coming along also. Like I always say the more the merrier that makes a total of 8.

But it only gets better, and I know that this is going to sound really strange and maybe messed up because of how life has been going lately. I mentioned our trip to Karolain, yes the wife that is living on her own. No things aren't that great yet, but I guess after all is said and done you gotta keep trying wherever and whenever you can to make things right. Of course she is interested in going to Disneyland, and yes she says under the pretext of she has a 5 and a 2 year old, who wouldn't want to go. I am not saying that I had any alterior motives for asking her to go, yes after all is said and done I do and I will state it to anyone that I don't want to go through what we are going through. Would I sacrifice a good time with the kids and family to maybe make something good happen in our little family. If something good happens then hurray for it, if nothing does happen and we still can't be a family then I will just have to keep trying harder and keep doing everything to once again have my family back.

Anyways the clan is up to 9 now all said and done, two cars was probably going to have to happen anyways, we were always going to get two hotel rooms (who wants to live through the nightmare of sharing a hotel room with their parents - Eric you are the one that is going to have to sacrifice one for the team this time).

So back to the matter at hand I bought the tickets last night and don't think I am getting the excitement out of the kids that I was expecting. I think tomorrow I might have to make one of those calendars that counts backwards until the day something really special happens. Because it must only by like less then 50 days until we finally make it to Disneyland. We will have fun with those that wanna have fun and the rest are just going to have to make due with what they got.

San Diego

This blog is coming a few months late. The kids, my dad and I went to San Diego for a week at the first of May this year. I was a little concerned for the kids and for my Dad. I hadn't ever taken the kids by myself for such a long time. The trip turned out great and we had some really fun times. I promised on my last post that I would get my camera back and post some photos from this trip. I hadn't remembered how much fun we really had until I viewed the photos of this trip. It really was a blast and thanks dad for having the patience that you did on this trip with us. I know that my kids really enjoyed it and I had a great time getting away from Salt Lake for a whole week and really just relaxing.

So here goes the photos I hope that I can explain all the fun that we had:


























We stopped in St. George on the way to San Diego to pick up my dad and spent a couple of days there enjoying the pre-hot weather that we were about to endure. The kids always have fun in St. George with any of the clan that still resides there.

Once in San Diego we had three major stops to make; Seaworld were a lot of the photos are taken (filled up the only memory card to quick) The kids love the penguins and grandpas really awesome hat!!! I think we must have went through the penguin house like 4 or 5 times (much cooler than a regularly cooled AC building, nice)

I don't know why I can't figure out this blogger page but I can't write next to some of the photos. Dad really did good with the kids he showed tons of patience and even allowed the kids to get interactive with a lot of the attractions at Seaworld, like the starfish.

The next leg of our trip was the San Diego Zoo, what a fun place other than however many acres the zoo is it literally sits on probably 3 or 4 humongous hills in downtown San Diego. Lovely place and some really nice exhibits but pushing a double stroller got old really quick. The picture after the starfish is 2 giant hippos just lounging in the heat. The kids really enjoyed these type of exhibits where they could actually see through what has to be some pretty thick glass into the hippos or the polar bear shot in the next picture. Really fun to see a polar bear in the water playing and swimming right on the other side of the glass. They even had a panda bear exhibit, the problem with this exhibit is they were doing some sort of study on the panda bears and wanted everyone to be really quiet around them (good luck with a 4 year old and a 2 year old who honestly believed that he was whatever animal we were viewing at the time and had to try and imitate the noises they make).

We actually went to the San Diego Wild Animal Park one day but by this time the camera was definitely full and the photographer was extremely tired of taking pictures. Fun park and much more in their habitat the animals than at the zoo. The last pictures are by far of the favorite thing that we did that the kids liked the best, Shamu, or one of his relatives. We sat through the killer whale show twice the first time we were at the very bottom next to the tank and in the "wet zone" little did we know that when they mean wet zone they really aren't trying to pull your leg. You are going to get soaked and smell like fish for the rest of the day. It was fun though and the kids liked being wet, but up that close you can't see anything that the whales are actually doing so the second time is when the photo was taken and we were actually sitting in some shade pretty high up in the auditorium.

The video is something that I had forgotten we had taken. If this is the right video it is actually pretty funny. You really couldn't see the orca coming up until he/she got right next to where you were standing. You see Matthew jump back in fear as it swims by and then can faintly hear Grandpa and I laughing in the background because we must have stood there for about 5 minutes and everytime the orca would swim by Matthew would do the exact same thing, shun in fear and then return to looking through the glass as soon as it had went by.

This will be a hard vacation to beat, hopefully when we go to Disneyland in December we will at least have as much fun as we had in San Diego in May.