California Vacation Day 2-The Zoo and When Mama Got Rich

The next morning everyone wanted to go for a swim after breakfast.  

 

 

Sarah's sister Sadie came along with them on the trip, and she was SUCH a big help to all of us.  Neely really loved her and wanted to "hold that other girl's hand" everywhere we went.  She was really good with the kids and made our jobs a lot easier.  Especially whenever water was involve, with all these little folks around.

 

 I didn't feel like swimming so at first Reed was hanging out with me.  

He clearly wanted in though, so I changed him into his trunks and gave him to Jess.

 After swimming, we headed to the zoo.

We're all fans of pandas, especially Cason, so our family had made that our goal, and the Cassons seemed happy to go along with that.  So we headed that direction, seeing whatever we could on the way.  It was a nice little workout, for those of us who aren't in good shape(me).  

Not much to say about the zoo that you wouldn't guess, so here are a bunch of pictures instead.

We had some tired little people at the end of the day.  A couple of them slept right through souvenir shopping.

We met Noel and Michael for mexican food afterwards, and I was a failure and took no pictures.  We let the kids run free for a bit after, and I only took pictures of the children apparently, so you'd never know the rest of us were there.  Ha.

We all headed for our hotels after that.  Ours that night was downtown.  It was a really nice and really old hotel.  

I loved it.  We had mints on our pillows and robes, and all the fixin's.  Ha.  I pretended to be fancy, and Cason was messing around on my phone, glanced up at me just as Jess took my picture, looked BACK at the phone and said, all casually, "you should call that one:  "Mama got rich."  Haha!  That had me cracking up.  Crazy fellow.

Then Neely got rich.

California Vacation-Day 1(Lego Land)

Last week we headed to California for a little vacation.  We left very early Thursday morning, and headed straight to Lego Land.  We got there at about 10:30.  The kids got SO excited when they started seeing signs that we were just about there.

 

It was really cool, especially for Lego obsessed kids like ours.  I do think it would be better for older kids though.  Like 5-12 or somewhere around there.  The little ones don't have the patience for the long lines, and we weren't able to see a large percentage of the park, because we made our way pretty slowly.  I think their favorite part was getting to trade their little Lego Minifigures with employees around the park.  There were rides, 

and play areas..

 

 

Reed enjoyed riding/tandem napping with Colin in the Cassons' double stroller.

The second half of the day we spent at the water park part of Lego Land.  This was not the easiest few hours we've spent, and made us think twice about a Wet'n'Wild trip we've been considering.  Four kids, with only two of us to keep them safe in the water, not to mention all the lines...I'm not so sure about that anymore.  BUT we had fun, and Reed and I LOVED their version of the Lazy River.  We all went around 3 or 4 times, and I would've loved to just do that all day.  Reed sat happily in his little infant inner tube thing, and cried so hard when it ended the first time.  He'd been content, but we didn't realize how much he was liking it until we tried to take him out.  So back in line we went, and went around a few more times. 

When we finally were done, we headed to the gift shop for some souvenirs, and then got some tasty Italian food for dinner. 

Some people enjoyed it more than others.

 

Haha!  Not really, this was a short-lived meltdown.  If I remember right it was because I wanted to eat some of my ravioli too, rather than giving it ALL to her.

It was so nice out once it was evening, almost chilly!  I might have to move there, somehow.

Why I'm Mean

I was starting to think to myself "wow, summer hasn't been so bad, maybe in the past I imagined it, or it was just because I was pregnant and it felt hotter."  It's been hot, sure, but bearable.  We tried to play outside some...

 

 Lily and Paige rode bikes back and forth to each other's houses, or talked to each other by walkie talkie.  The younger kids get jealous sometimes and want to walk to the cousins' houses too.  One day Cason and Neely thought they were getting to walk all by themselves.  They didn't realize Reed and I were following.  Haha.

Veronica and the girls walked down to play some days.

We went bowling with the Stout family one day.

 

Cason read books to us.  He's doing so well.  

 Neely's been asking to learn too, so Jess finally decided to start with her recently.  She seems to be picking it up really well too.  She's already on lesson 18, and gets so excited when she reads a word and realizes what it is.  She'll use it in a sentence for us and giggle every time.  She lasts about 1 lesson, sometimes another half lesson, and then starts getting distracted and Jess will stop there until she asks again.

I've also been on dates with Alex and Faith.  I took them separately to get ice cream.  It was nice getting to talk with them.  Usually the kids are so excited to be with their cousins that I can't really spend time with them.

 

When July started, and it got humid, I remembered why I'm always so ready for fall by this time.   We started spending more time inside, other than the occasional hour or so in the little pool.  Paige has done a ton of reading.  She read all 13 A Series of Unfortunate Events books in just a few short weeks.

There was plenty of Lego building, by me AND them.

Lots of cuddling...

Drawing, mostly by Neely and Cason.  

Cason has been drawing TONS of dragons, ever since seeing How to Train Your Dragon II.  We all loved it, but he can think only of it.  In typical Cason fashion, he loves it for the adventure and the awesome vikings RIDING dragons, but also because he thinks Toothless is SO cute and sweet.  It's funny because he was pretty much a baby when the first movie was in theaters, but we own it and he's hardly watched it.  He didn't realize how good it was until seeing the second movie.  Now he's watched the first one several times in just a week.  He spent days perfecting his drawings of all the different types of dragons, and the vikings that ride each of them.  

He's decided he wants a How to Train Your Dragon birthday party.   I love this, because I'm almost as obsessed with Toothless as he is.  I love when I get to plan their parties and it's something I love too.  It's so much fun.  I'm working on a stuffed Toothless toy for him, which I have to somehow do without him realizing what it is.  

Anyway, back to their art...Neely's drawings are very cute, and are of a wide variety of subjects, from robots and aliens...

 

...to our family riding horses and zebras.

She also recently started writing letters to people.

This specific one was written to me after we got the mail one day, and there was a package containing birthday presents for Cason.  I wanted her to keep it secret, since his birthday is still a month and a half away.  Anyway, the letter says "you are mean because you will not let me tell Cason his birthday presents."