Huntington Beach, CA/ Downtown Disney

CALIFORNIA!!!

 One night a few weeks before spring break Ari and I were up late. We were in the process of going to bed and all of a sudden Ari turned the iPad to me and showed me she was on the "Get away today" website. "What do you think about Disneyland?" she said. Ummmmmmm...what? We hadn't been talking about this at all. 

All of a sudden Ari was signing us up for a Disneyland spring break trip. And with our wonderful late night judgement I encouraged her to go ahead. 

The next morning we woke up and looked at each other and said, "what were we thinking!" 

But hey, what was done was done. We decided to surprise the kids with a trip to Disneyland for the break. 

We went up to stay at Joanna's the night before we left and then left VERY early in the middle of the night so the kids would sleep most of the way. 

We arrived in Huntington Beach at about 10:00 and the kids were ready for breakfast. We went to an awesome Marie Calendar's and had a great buffet breakfast. Chicken enchiladas for brekky- I mean, come on!

While there, we changed into our church duds and went to the local church building. We attended sacrament. It was pretty funny because everyone kept coming up to us after the meeting asking if we were moving to the area. When we said they were visiting, they begged us to stay, and even said they'd help find me a job. So nice! How welcoming. 

Next, the kids were raring to go down to the beach. So, we decided to have a little fun beach time after church. The winter had seemed so dark and dreary this year so this was the balm of gillead to our souls. I can't believe how much our kids LOVE the beach. Kodee loves to be in the water. Jaxon is a builder and nothing can take him away from his projects. 

Lottie was a little scared of the water- she definitely liked to keep her distance.

Gemma in the fray!

Building away. They would have built the Great Wall of China if we let them.

Cheese!

Funny story- the man in the back is John Batty. He was there with his family too on break and we randomly ran into each other. Fun to see the Battys.

Selfie with the water!

Future coast guard rescue worker!

Gemma wanted to be covered in the sand by Daddy.

We went for a mermaid- not sure you can tell.

Lottie thought she wanted to try it too, but decided she was not really into it.

We tried to build an awesome castle with a mote. That's tough work.

Fun with Jax!

Fun with the water lovers!

Selfie with mom and dad. Mom has really good posture!

Jaxon was VERY proud of his wall.

We decided to walk down to the end of the huge pier at Huntington Beach. Family selfie with the selfie stick. It was cool cause there was an ice cream parlor at the end of the really long pier. It amazed me that the workers had to walk in to work for every shift. It really is quite a walk. I wish I had a picture of that.

Kodee got really close to this pelican. We were really freaked out by it.

We had a little scare when we first walked to the pier. It was very crowded- tons of people. Kodee had run on ahead and by the time we got to the boardwalk, we couldn't find him anywhere. I was frantically searching the crowd and we couldn't see him. It was about the longest 10 minutes of my life. I thought for sure someone had taken him. We walked a little ways down the pier and he was sitting on a bench waiting for us. Needless to say, we had a good heart to heart about staying together and NEVER leaving us again. He did a good job after that.

After we checked into our hotel we thought it would be fun to go to Downtown Disney and do a little window shopping. The major hit was the lego store. SO COOL. The kids spent the whole evening there, building legos and looking at all the toys. Truly magical.

Every little detail was amazing.

This is the wall where kids could take legos and play with them.

This is Jaxon's next wish list item. I think he just might be ready for it.

This dragon breathing fire was crazy cool.

It was a bummer because during the evening Jordan started feeling sick. He already had a terrible stomach situation, but then he felt the onset of strep throat- fever, headache, sore throat, swollen glands, etc. NOOOOO- not possible at the happiest place on earth!!!