Monday, January 5, 2015

I know it’s been a long lime coming, and it’s about time I started writing again, but you know as well as I that its hard for me to write when I’m on vacation.  Friday we set out for California as soon as we could after the kids got out of school.  We only went as far as Prim, we spent the night at ‘Whisky Pete's’, not the best place to spend the night.  All we got was complaining from Jack that it was gross.  We went across the street to eat dinner at a buffet, BAD IDEA!  It was the worst buffet I’ve ever been to.  There was a small buffet table to choose from only a couple different things, the desserts tasted like they had been sitting there for several days.  GROSS!  We met Melinda and Curtis at breakfast the next morning, they didn’t arrive there until after midnight due to the fact that Curtis had to work and they went to their ward Christmas party.  We ate at IHOP that morning, so it made up for that nasty dinner.

On the road again Saturday.  Brenden decided he wanted to stop at Calico Ghost Town, he had always heard that it was over 20 miles off the freeway, but it wasn’t, it was right off the freeway.  It was pretty awesome!  The best part about the whole place is the Mystery Shack!  It was the craziest house ever.  It was all about illusion and it was freaky.   It wasn’t as warm as we were hopping for.  The Friday night after we had already left Enterprise we got our first snow fall of the winter, we missed it, but were hoping to have some really nice weather in California, with no such luck. 

When we rolled into California we were a little too early to check into our hotel rooms so we parked the van and went out to have some lunch.  After checking into our room and getting all settled in we went over to the Santa Monica Pier, which I wish we wouldn’t have done, just because I took about an hour to get there, and we were just there last May.  The kids still had fun though.  They were dying to go to the beach though, we kept promising them some beach time later, which didn’t exactly come like I had planned. 
   

Sunday we ended up going to Knotts Berry Farm.  I haddn’t been since I was little.  We’ve always wanted to go, but every time we go to California we make plans to go to Disney Land and don’t have time or money left for anything else.  It was way fun, it just really sucked because Taryn was too short for most all of the rides.  I loved it because it wasn’t as busy as Disneyland.  The lines weren’t too long, but I hated that the rides were way too SHORT!   We still had a ton of fun though.  There weren’t a ton of rides, so it didn’t take long before Brenden and I wanted to leave.
 
The kids kept wondering what we were going to do for the rest of the trip, of course we couldn’t tell them yet what we had in store for them.  They all wanted to go back to Knotts Berry Farm.  Monday morning we woke up, got ready and left the Hotel and went had and some Breakfast.  Still the kids didn’t know what we were going to do.  We got back in the van and started driving, when we were getting closer to the Pier I told them that we were going to go on a cruise.  No one believed me.  I kept trying to tell them that I wasn’t lying, but still, no one believed me.  I said, fine then, you'll see.    Then they started to believe me.  It was such an awesome surprise!  Brenden had bumped us up to the VIP check in, so we didn't have to stand in line at all, we just got right on the boat, that was way nice.  Last time we were in line for at least 4 hours!  Even though we just ate, we went up and ate some more.  Ryans goal was to have 24 ice cream cones, he only got to 23, and didn’t realize he wouldn’t be able to get that 24th one in later.  The kids loved the mini Golfing they had on the top deck.  They went swimming this one time and froze their butts off!  When we went to eat dinner, Cole thought his napkin was a hat.  It was so fun!  Jack, even though he wasn’t quite 12 yet, got to go hang out with the older kids in their group.  Most of the time we had no idea where our kids were, except Cole, he had to  be checked in and out of his group.  But the other kids just did whatever they wanted, it was great!  I was a little worried about Jack.  He got left once on the first or second night and had to find his way back to our room, it was tricky, but he found it.  So proud of him, I think he grew up a lot, and became more independent. 

Tuesday the ship stopped at Catalina.  It was fun, but it had been way stormy outside that morning so all the shore excursions got canceled.  We hadn't planned anything, but there just wasn’t a whole lot to do, so we walked around and let the kids get in some “beach time”  Cole got SOAKED!  While we were at the beach this Asian guy decided he wanted to take a picture with our children, he arranged them the way he wanted them, then handed me the camera to take the picture.  Way too funny, I saw him later on the ship doing this to other families too.  Wonder what he told the people back home. 

Since  Brenden upgraded our room, we had a balcony, it was so nice, and our room was pretty big too, for a cruise ship room.  There were Asian people EVERYWHERE!


It was really nice because on the Ship Cole and Taryn loved going to their group.  They got to stay there until 10 p.m. before we would start to get charged for the night, so we would drop them off, the older kids would just do whatever, and we would go have some fun.  We would pick up the littles by 10, head back to our room and go to sleep.  The kids could stay in their group until 12:30 if they wanted to, so we told them to just come in and quietly go to bed when they wanted to.  We should have been better parents and waited up for them, but we were so tired!
Wednesday was our “Day at Sea”  it was fun.  They even had a Christmas Program the kids got to participate in, well the older kids didn’t want to participate, so it was just Cole and Taryn.  In Coles play group they got to make an animal, kind of like build a bear.  Loved it!


Thursday we stopped in Ensenada.  We decided that we would rent some four wheelers and go have some fun.  They showed us a map to where the zip lines were, it didn’t look too far away, so we had the NON ENGLISH SPEAKING  guide take us there.  Took about 90 min to get there, wholy crap!  We were driving down the main streets of Ensenada, so weird.  Ryan and Sammy had to take turns driving.  Jack didn’t think it smelled very good.  It smelled like POO!  Just right there though.


We got to the zip line and it only cost $20 a person!  What an awesome deal!  Brenden decided to stay behind while we had all the fun.  Most of the time Cole and I were stuck together.  The zip lines were pretty awesome, but the bridges to get to them were just as cool.  They were pretty scarry, I can’t believe Cole did it.  He almost fell once, but they have you doubly safe with cords and stuff.  There were 5 zip lines and 5 bridges.  On the last zip line our guide took Cole and Taryne so Curtis and I could go by ourselves. 

By the time we got done with the zip line and got back into town we didn’t have much time for shopping, which made me sad.  The guys were so worried about not making it back to the ship intime. 
At dinner they always had a “rare find”  Ryan tried them every night.  First it was alligator fritters, then frog legs then…..Wait for it…….Escargot!  Jack tried that one too.  That’s the only one I didn’t dare try.  Since my birthday was the next day our servers sang happy birthday to me!  What a great end to a great trip!