Finally a vacation that was just long enough! You know how you take a 4 day weekend and you get back to work on Monday and wish the weekend could have been just one day longer? Or when you go out of town for 5 days or so and wish you could stay just one or two more? Well I can honestly say that this 10 day trip was just long enough. By the time we left our hotel in Cali for Vegas we were ready to be home. And arriving home on a Saturday instead of a Sunday is a fabulous idea because it gives you that extra day to unpack, do laundry and settle into being back home before you have to go back to work (or to the dentist to get a permanent crown put in, in my case).
Our trip to California was great! Not without its bumps and meltdowns (I think we all had at least one each) but overall it was great!
Thursday night we stopped in Vegas. Friday morning we got breakfast then went to the Lieds Discovery Children's Museum. I highly recommend this and here is why- it's a fun little museum (similar to the Discovery Gateway museum here in SLC) and Sasha played hard for about 2 1/2 hours. Within 5 minutes of getting in the car she was dead asleep and stayed that way for over half the drive to Cali. It made that leg of the trip very peaceful. So if you have kids and you're stopping in Vegas for whatever reason, go spend a couple of hours there to tire them out before you get on the road again. It was less than $10 per person to get in and I thought it was well worth it. Here's a few pics . . . .
A 'scary' cave . . .
Flying a plane with daddy . . .
Playing with Papa and power tools. . .
Check out the hunk I found playing with the blocks . . .
Ah the bubbles! She loved the bubble stations! They even had this cool platform you could stand on and make a bubble that you were inside! It was so cool!!!
Inside the wind machine
Holding on to Papa's hat while he was in the wind machine . . .
We planned on staying at the Marriott Vacation Club in Newport Beach and we did . . . for one night anyway. We got the week from one of Josh's wonderful and generous clients, who has given us weeks at her condos before, but never this particular one. When she booked the week for us she neglected to put our names as the guests checking in to use the week. Apparently at this resort they have had far too many owners sell their week online to multiple parties and they get 2, sometimes 3 families showing up for the same unit. So they didn't want to let us check in until we got confirmation from the owner that it was okay. Well unfortunately this client of Josh's is a very busy woman and travels out of the country a lot and we weren't able to get a hold of her. :( So rather than pay the rate to stay the week at that hotel (about $350 per night . . . eek! A bit out of our price range) we ended up spending the first Saturday of our trip trying to find a suitable hotel for our party of 7 close to the beach and/or Disney. Fortunately we did! (Thank goodness for those Hilton Honors points!) And from then on out the trip was pretty smooth.
We spend Sunday at the Newport Farmer's Market then headed to the beach down in Laguna. B.E.A.utiful!
Part two coming soon . . .
