Christmas Week

We spent the 19th through the 26th in California. My family and Jason's were all there. Mary (Jason's mom) came on the 10th to Utah for a visit before California and also celebrated Jayden's 8th birthday, that's another blog.
On the 18th Jason and Mary packed up her minivan while I was at work. We got all lugage including presents into the van with lots of room for us to sit and have a nice 9-10 hour drive to our hotel. After I got off of work and made it home around 9pm, we took off. We ended up getting into California about 5 or 6am with plenty of time to wander aroud, practically delirious from exhaustion. We had to wait until 11:30 for Chris (Jason's brother) and his wife and baby to get in from Minnesota to meet them at the airport and had to wait until 3 for our hotel room. Needless to say, that first night was an early to bed night.
The next day we got up and moved to the hotel my family was staying at. While we waited for that room to be ready, which was a 2 bedroom condo (Nikki and Jeff have a timeshare with Wyndham), we did the timeshare deal to each get a $75 AMEX gift card. We came very close to buying, but they wanted close to $9000 down and we didn't have that between Mary, Chris, Becky, Jason and I. So, we took our cards and went to eat which took most of the time between the timeshare thing and our 4pm check in time. Jason and I also went to eat dinner with Nikki, Jeff, Jaimie, and Ricky at a place called the White House. It was supposed to be really good, but I've had better. The company is what made that night worth being there for.
The condo was wonderful. I didn't take pictures, so I can't show you, but it was great. There were two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a pullout couch and a kitchenette. We were able to eat in more saving a little bit of money.
Wednesday we went to Hollywood. Traffic is horrible in California and I don't ever want to live there. We did the Hollywood walk of fame and a 2 hour tour of Hollywood and Beverly Hills. We didn't get a chance to meet up with my family that day, which was interesting considering they were in Hollywood in the same part of Hollywood as us also. I was so unimpressed with Hollywood and how dirty it was. The tour was a little pathetic considering you could only see the top or the gate of the stars' homes. But it was still a good day. We ate at a restaurant call BJ's. It had pizza and all sorts of other foods, they didn't nail down one type they specialized in and that was fine because it was so good. My family had pizzas and Mary had a pasta dish. Chris and Becky took their very tired selves and baby back to the hotel and didn't join us for dinner. BJ's also has these wonderful desserts call Pizookies. They're cookies made similar to a pizza in that it comes in small a plateabout 6 inches in diameter and it came with ice cream. It was a-maz-ing.
Thursday we joined up with my family and headed to Santa Monica Pier. It was beautiful. It was a bit chilly mostly when the wind blew, but it was so much fun. The water was so ridiculously cold I felt as if I'd stepped into ankle deep snow without shoes on. We got to see dolphins playing in the water, but they didn't come out much more than just their backs. The kids collected sea shells, did some splashing in the freezing water, and made sand castles with their aunts, uncles, and cousins.
Friday we went to Disneyland. I loved taking my kids there. Disney was a good tradition in my family when I was growing because we lived so close and my parents worked there (so did Nikki and I when we were old enough) that I wanted to share such a wonderful and fun place with my children. Our first ride was the 3D Star Tours which is a ride done with the Star Wars theme. All my kids loved it. We then went on the Matterhorn. Jayden hated that and wouldn't go on another roller coaster type ride again.
Kail, on the other hand, loved it. He was able to get onto Space Mountain, Splash Mountain, and Tower of Terror also. He wasn't too sure about Space Mountain or Tower of Terror, but he loved Splash Mountain and wanted to go again. Jayden did go on Tower of Terror too because he promised Jason he would try it and he hated that as well. Stacey loved everything we went on. She wanted so badly to go on rides more than once, but we wanted to see the two parks and the lines were ridiculously long.
Saturday was a relax day. We'd been so busy the other days that Jason and I said no to doing anything. We did go to WalMart for a few last minute items including food for that night's festivities. All the kids put on a Christmas play created by Stacey and written by Jaimie with Stacey's ideas. It was a very good play and it was so cool to see how creative Stacey can be.
Stacey played Santa, Jayden and Kail played Santa's deer, Amelie played an elf and Alisa was supposed to play a character that became an elf, but she was sick and not cooperating very well.
Christmas day was another lazy day. We enjoyed opening presents with the kids. We got Mary some family gifts like ceramic coffee mugs that the kids painted and picture frames we neatly placed pictures in. Then we went to my family's room for more present opening and breakfast. We had to move rooms again that day and, thankfully, our room was ready by 9am so we didn't have to hang in limbo between check out time at noon and check in time at 4. We got all moved and enjoyed some breakfast. The kids went swimming again and we went to lunch/dinner with my family at 3. It was quite an adventure to find somewhere to eat, but we did it and it was nice.
We left California at 5am Pacific time and headed home. We are all tired and ready to sleep, but we all had a great time. I should clarify that we all just means us adults. The kids are ready to play.
So, because of the many details of our trip and the amount of pictures we got, I'm doing a written blog (this one) and a picture blog (to come after this is written). I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and Happy New Year!