We had such an awesome thanksgiving at the beach! Uncle Russ and Aunt Lori provided us with a beautiful house on the beach in San Clemente to stay in with all of the extended family. Tyson had to work until the day before thanksgiving so the boys and I traveled to CA with the Cook fam. We slept over at the Cooks Saturday night and left for CA early Sunday morning. It was the longest drive of my life! Literally. We got stuck in traffic outside of Vegas. We could see the Gold Strike hotel sign flashing "Pet Friendly, Live Craps" for 4 hours. No joke. Here we are in the light of day.
And here we are in the dark. In the same place. Fin was waving to all the people as we passed by. I think he was brightening up the situation for a lot of people! Someone actually took his picture. He even had the truck drivers smiling. Whenever we put Fin back in his seat he screamed. Non stop. For several hours of the ride. It wasn't even really cry screaming it was more like yelling. Grampa Cook got so fed up at one point he yelled back! It was frightening for all of us! :)
But when we got there it was all worth it!
Beautiful view from the family room.
This boy could live on the beach.
This boy celebrated his first birthday on the beach! Lucky baby! Every time we went outside he could not stop saying "oooooohhhhhh!"
We went to the Orange County zoo. It was great! For only $2 the boys loved it! They got to brush the goats and see a mountain lion training show. Fin threw a tantrum every time we left one animal until we got to the next.
Fin trying to escape to the beach.
Looking for shells.
We took a walk on the pier at Dana Point and got ice cream.
Fin got buried.
Tyson took a trip to see the babies before he came to join us! He sent this to me to make me jealous while I was at the beach and it worked! He picked up Kennedi and the two flew out to meet us Wednesday.
Wednesday morning before we picked them up we went to the Dana Point beach and paddle boarded. Collette and I went out and stayed sitting down. Then I took all the kids out for a ride one by one and started feeling like I could probably try standing up. So Collette and I went out again and I stood up and it was SO HARD! I could not keep my balance and I was so scared i was going to fall into the ocean! I probably stood there for 5 minutes before I was brave enough to lower myself down. Then I realized like an hour later that the reason it was so hard is because I was standing sideways on the board like a wakeboard! Duh. No wonder I couldn't balance! Someday I'll try again. Maybe next time I'll get the ab work out people claim to get. There's a pic out there somewhere but I don't have it.
On Thanksgiving morning six of us participated in the Dana Point Turkey Trot! We got a treadmill and I started training for this 5K about a month before. I started at a 15 minute mile and by the time the race came I could run 2 miles in 24 minutes and then I was so done. So the race was HARD. I never want to do it again. It was SO HOT. And we raced around the harbor so it smelled like fish! I quite prefer running my one mile a day while watching "New Girl" with a fan blowing in my face. But anyway we did it! Tyson was nice and stayed with me the whole time even though I just kept repeating over and over that I was going to die. We all finished around 45 minutes. I was very happy with that time.
All the animals came out for Thanksgiving! I was glad Tyson got to see some of them because we'd seen a lot of fun things throughout the week. Dolphins swam past the house a couple mornings.
Fin & Aunt Kennedi
All the kids were out playing and soon a friend came to grab a bite to eat...
This seal came right in between Easton and Deryk and snatched up this little shark! I don't know if I was more concerned about the seal or the shark. Or that we didn't even know they were there until they swam away.
Grandkids and great grandkids! Jasper is the youngest grandkid there and Fin is the youngest great grandkid there. And they are only three weeks apart. :)
The whole fam-damily
Christmas card pics
Tyson took kids out on the paddle board.
Friday we went to Lego Land! We had gotten Easton tickets for his birthday. It was fun! If we did it again I would do Disney. Legoland was fun but the rides were very limited! There were crazy age and height restrictions so Callan couldn't do a lot of stuff and the stuff Cal could do wasn't very appealing to Easton. Anyway they had fun. That's just my two cents.
Easton and Tyson stood in line forever for this ride!
The boys got to go snow tubing in fake snow and we posed with this Lego guy in front of the Lego Christmas tree. Is this Emmett? I don't know...
Callan and Tyson in a red helicopter. Callan's dream come true.
There aren't a lot of pictures inside the beach house but we had so much fun just relaxing and watching the cousins play. The boys loved Bingo night! They came home with tons of prizes! Everyone took turns with meals and everything was so fun! Easton could have literally stayed on the beach 24/7 and been perfectly happy.
Fin and I got to fly home. The rest of the family left early Saturday morning. Grandma, Fin, and I had flights around 5 that night so we got to spend the day at Russ and Lori's. Fin got to play in Luke's ball pit and Russ babysat Fin while we went out to lunch. Somehow he got him to take a nap!
I gave Fin a healthy helping of Benadryl before his first flight remembering the screaming car ride on the way there.
We sat next to a very nice BYU student. Bless her heart. The second the plane started taxiing and the seatbelt signs came on Fin decided to poop. Ugh. So that poor girl and I had to suffer with the stench through the whole take off process. She said she had a stuffy nose anyway. I was so embarrassed. So then I had to take him to the tiny bathroom, put him on tissues on the floor and sit on the toilet to change his diaper and stuff his diaper down the tiny trash whole. Yikes. He never slept. He was squirmy and restless the entire flight. He enjoyed looking out the window for a tiny minute. I was relieved when the Sprite and pretzels came around. I had gotten him some chocolate milk at the airport so he happily drank that for about 3 minutes while I chugged down some sprite before he could swat it onto the people around us. The cute girl next to us ended up having to make him paper airplanes out of her homework for the last half hour! Oh my. Really bless her. As soon as we got onto the shuttle to get to the car he was out like a light. Like so out that I was worried that people would start to wonder exactly what kind of medicine I gave the poor kid! What an adventure.
It was a wonderful trip!
