Vacation stall

We've been back from our family vacation since Monday night and I just can't seem to get my thoughts organized to blog about it. We packed a lot of driving and activity into 8 days. The kids were great travelers and there weren't too many arguments between everyone. I think I only sat on Ryan once during the whole trip, which is probably in itself a miracle.

We left home on Monday, July 21st for Las Vegas. It was an 11 hour drive. I have to say that there is absolutely nothing to see driving through the deserts of Nevada. They have all these signs to watch out for deer and stuff, and I actually scoured the flat grounds the whole way to make sure we didn't hit anything. Guess what, didn't see a darn thing. We stayed on the strip at Excalibur, which wasn't that great of a hotel, but for $60 bucks, it was great.

Tuesday we got up and took the kids swimming down in the pool, well, there were actually four pools, so that was fun for them. Then we hopped back in the car for another 4.5 hours to Anaheim. Then spent Wednesday, Thursday and Friday at Disneyland and California Adventure. Lots of fun was had, and we definitely learned a few things about how to do the parks.

Friday night we drove up to Valencia/Santa Clarita (I'm really not sure which city we were in) for Christy and Robert's wedding, which was our whole reason for going to California in the first place. My in-laws and Christy's parents are really good friends. They used to go on ski trips together when Chris, his brother Greg and Christy were younger. We hadn't seen her since our open house in Boise, so that was fun. Her parents Steve and Yolanda have come and visited a few times in the last year, so the kids were excited to see them again.

Next to our hotel was Six Flags Magic Mountain. The kids wanted to go soooo bad, but I was so tired of parks at that point, there was no way it was going to happen. It did look fun, though. Maybe next time.

After the wedding we headed back to Las Vegas and went to a show at the Excalibur. It was about King Arthur and the round table. They had horses and knights. Lots of fighting. Food you ate with your fingers. It was fun.

After time in the pool again we headed home. We made better time on the way home and were able to stop in Twin Falls to look at the new temple. I think it looks a lot like the one in Rexburg. It was good to see it with the kids. Hopefully we'll get back there in the next couple of weeks to go through the open house.

We had a great time, the kids seemed to have a great time. I'm still trying to get back into real life. I need to buy school supplies, take the kids shopping for school clothes and get Carter into swimming lessons before he starts Kindergarten on the 13th. I've also been trying to sort through over 800 pictures that Chris and his dad took on our trip so that I can post a few in the next few days, which I promise to do.

If you notice, there is a new family picture at the top. It was taken at Luxor, a casino/hotel on the Strip in Las Vegas. I figured it was time to update, the old photo was taken at Kennedy's baptism about three years ago.