Our California Family Vacation: Take 1

Due to high demands and requests from all our friends and family I am finally getting around to putting up some pics from our vacation last week. We have 700 pictures from the trip so please bare with me, it was super hard trying to narrow it down to make a post, so there may be a few posts over the next week with more as I work my way through all of them. Anyway for those of you who don't know, this past Tuesday afternoon Brandon, Owen and I headed out to Huntington Beach, CA for a family vacation and to visit Brandon's sister Megan, her husband Dan and their Dog Daisy. We got in around 9ish on Tuesday night and stayed until Saturday afternoon. Wow, this was by far the BEST family vacation the 3 of us have ever been on. Here is a little run down of our trip:
Tuesday:
Our plane got in around 9pm California time and my Sister-in-law & Brother-in-Law picked us up from the airport and took us back to their beautiful home. We got situated, put Owen to bed, stayed up and chit-chatted for about an hour and then we all put ourselves to bed.
Wednesday:
Megan and Dan both had to work half days in the morning so Brandon, Owen and I headed off to visit the Ikea store for our very first time. Not sure if you have ever been to one, but WOW they are awesome. We shopped around and had a nice lunch there. Once Megan and Dan got off work we all started to prepare for the Cinco de Mayo party they were hosting later that night. The party started around 5ish and we all hung out, ate way too much and enjoyed meeting their good friends.

Owen was entertained while we were all busy cooking our Mexican feast dinner for the party. His Auntie Megan & Uncle Dan got him this really cool bubble gun. He insisted on holding it towards him and shooting the bubbles at his face!

Auntie Megan also helped keep Owen occupied by having him help her pick Figs off their beautiful Fig Tree. If you can't tell in the picture they are having a blast. Owen was 6 months old the last time he saw his Auntie Megan, but it didn't take even 1 minute for him to warm up to her. He still asks for her every morning.

Thursday:

Welcome to Disneyland!!!! Well we decided since we were literally 10 minutes from Disneyland, why not go there for a day. We know Owen is still way too young to remember anything from this trip when he gets older, but we all had a blast and it was well worth the million dollars we spent there. Owen did so well the entire day with exactly 0 melt downs to report. We were there from 10am-7pm and he never cried or complained once. I think it was a combination of stimulation overload and pure fascination! Here is just a tenth of the pictures from our day there.

Owens very first amusement park ride ever was Dumbo. You can't really see his face very well, but he had a blast. When the ride stopped I believe his first words were, "Wow, more Dumbo."

Since Daddy and Uncle Dan were big babies and said the Tea Cups make them sick, Auntie Megan and I took Owen on this one alone! He had so much fun making the cup spin!Next in line was Its a Small World. Owen absolutely loved this ride. I don't think he blinked once the entire time. Auntie Megan and I took Owen to meet his first character Pluto. Owen is obsessed with the show Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and was so excited to meet a character from the show. He went right up to him and gave him a big High Five. He still talks about it every time he sees Pluto on TV. Next up we went to Mickey Mouses house to go meet him. Here is Owen sitting playing Mickey's piano. I know a lot of young kids are scared to meet characters for the first time, but that wasn't the case for Mr. Owen. He ran right up to Mickey and gave him a big hug. Once I picked Owen up to talk to Mickey he turned to him and gave him a huge High Five just like he did with Pluto. Here we are on the Roger Rabbit ride. Owen loved to pretend to steer the car for us. Owen successfully made it 6 hours at Disneyland before he passed out. I really mean passed out, after we rode the Nemo ride we sat him in his stroller with his blanket and he literally fell asleep in less than 30 seconds of touching his favorite balnky! He took a 40 minute nap and was good to go to finish off the day. Here we are waiting for the Parade to start. We got a front row seat to the parade it was awesome. Again Owen didn't blink the entire parade!And that concludes our day at Disneyland.

Friday:

We all slept in until about 8 since we were all so exhausted from our day at Disneyland. We took our time lounging around and then started packing up to head to the Beach for the day! Megan and Dan have this really sweet 1970 VW van that they have put a lot of work into. It was so fun riding in it to the Beach! Owen loved playing in the sand with his cool new Beach toys Auntie and Uncle bought him. At the end of the day the kid had sand in places I didn't even know it was possible to get sand in. Cutest picture EVER! So the water was literally 60 degrees, which to me and Brandon was freezing, but Owen loved it. He did not want to get out of the water the entire time we were at the beach! If we lived in CA I guarantee our son would be a little surfer dude. He was fascinated with the people surfing and he wasn't afraid of the giant waves hitting him in the face one bit. Im not too fond of this picture, but its Brandon's favorite. He thinks it is hilarious that my face is in complete shock from the freezing cold water and Owen has this huge smile on his face and not fazed at all by how cold it was. Now it was Auntie Megan's turn to give Brandon and I a break from the cold water. Owen and their dog Daisy chasing Megan down the beach. And back to play in the sand some more. Family Photo!Auntie Megan, Owen, Daisy & Uncle Dan.

We had a blast at the Beach but we eventually had to leave to put Owen down for a really late afternoon nap. On the way home we decided that a CA vacation was not complete until we ate at In & Out Burger. Yummy, it was amazing! Once back at the house, we all rested, showered and recuperated from a day at the Beach. That night we went and took a fairy to downtown Newport Beach. It was quite an experience riding on a fairy with 3 big cars on it, but it was a lot of fun and a very beautiful ride. Saturday:

:*( Spent the morning packing up to head home. We were dropped off at the airport around noon and that concluded our wonderful, relaxing, much needed last family vacation with just the 3 of us. We are so thankful to have such a wonderful Auntie and Uncle for Owen to share this experience with and to be able to spend some much needed time with. God has truly blessed our little family and we cannot wait to see what joy this amazing little girl he is knitting together inside my belly brings to our family. Thank you God for allowing us to have this amazing life, family & children and for blessing Brandon with an amazing job that allows us to take great family vacations such as these.

We hope you enjoyed the pictures and a little run down of our great trip. Like I said I have about 670 more pictures so I promise to keep adding some little by little over the next couple weeks.