Our Family Vacation 2011

Thanks to my parents, we were able to do a very special family vacation this year.  For our birthdays and Christmas, they bought us Southern CA CityPasses and let us share their timeshare hotel with them in Anaheim. We ended up making it a 2 week vacation and as we drove down California, we stopped in San Francisco to visit Cale and Lauren (my bro and sis in law).  We then drove all the way down to San Diego where we went to Sea World, the San Diego Wild Animal Park and visited some good friends, The Sellars, who live there.  We then drove back up to Anaheim where we were able to do 3 days at Disneyland.  It was an amazing family vacation and I think something the boys will be talking about for the rest of the year.  Here are some pictures from our Trip.  It was hard to choose from all of them!!!

San Francisco
Our first stop was San Francisco where we spent 2 days with Uncle Cale and Aunt Lauren.  We had so much fun and Jacob, especially was VERY sad to leave his Uncle Cale.  He just thinks he is the coolest uncle ever and kept asking us the rest of the trip if we were going to go back.  I think it helps that they have 2 very cute doggies :-)

San Diego

Our first adventure was to the beach where we met up with my cousin Nicole and her kiddos.  It was the boys first time actually going in the ocean and it was a priceless moment to see.  They both LOVED it so much and we had to drag them out of the water when they had both gotten to the point that they were crying because they were freezing cold, but didn't want to get out of the water!  It was such a fun memory to have with them.  

Later that day we went over to our friends The Sellars house to swim, have pizza and just sit back and chat.  It was soooo much fun and as you can see the boys got along great with their son Sam.  They swam and played HARD and I think they all slept VERY well that night!  We love you Sellars family!!!!

We then headed over to SeaWorld the next day.  The boys were in awe at all the animals.  We had the PERFECT day and it was overcast until about 1pm that afternoon so we were not sweltering hot for too many hours that day.  It also was a weekday and because of the weather, it was pretty dead for the first 1/2 of the day.  We were there when they opened and closed the doors when they closed and it was such a fun day.  

We then had a family day off and just hung at the hotel for a rest and swimming.  It was a nice little break in between the big days we had :-)

The next day we packed up to leave San Diego and stopped at the Wild Animal Park on our way up to Anaheim.  The boys enjoyed that and I don't know that I had ever been there before.  It was CRAZY big and HOT, but still fun.  We spent a little while there before heading out to Anaheim for the last leg out of trip.  

Anaheim

We were spending 6 days and 5 nights in Anaheim sharing a large timeshare with my parents and sisters and I knew this was going to be the most fun for the boys.  They had so much fun I cannot even put it into words!  I think the pictures speak for themselves.  For those of you who know our boys, you know that Disney is their favorite channel.  We only allow them to watch Disney and PBS, so they don't have much to go off of, but they love it.  Specifically Jacob loves Jake and the Pirates and Caleb loves Little Einsteins.  They both LOVE Mickey Mouse Club House too. It is absolutely amazing watching Disneyland through the eyes of your children...words cannot describe it.  Jacob was our little daredevil and he went on every ride he could go on (height-wise) except for Tower of Terror (I can't believe they would let someone his size go on that!).  This includes Splash Mountain (TWICE) and Thunder Mountain Railroad.  The "fast train" was his favorite.  Caleb did not like Mickey's Go Coaster, so I have a feeling he is NOT going to be a daredevil like his brother.  We had an amazing family time and definitely something our family needed after the last few years we have had. Joe was able to completely unplug from work (I don't think he has EVER done that since I met him) and we were able to connect and bond as a family.  I even see it in the boys in the way they are playing and talking to each other.  It makes a mommy's heart happy.