California Vacation - Sure was fun!

We had a busy and fun week this past week. Our California vacation officially started on Tuesday and we woke up early to get on the 6:15AM flight to Houston where we connected to Los Angeles. We landed in Los Angeles at 9:05AM and then headed to get our rental car and head to Anaheim, CA. By the time we arrived we were hungry and Jakob was exhausted! He ended up sleeping a little at Denny's!

Once Jakob woke up, we headed back to our rental car and changed shoes and got our tickets for Disney. We walked around Disney and I believe Tuesday was the hottest day of our trip. However, the high was only probably about 80 degrees! It was really busy at Disneyland our first afternoon. The lines had over hour waits, but later the same evening they were better. We watched the parade in the afternoon and Jakob loved the parade. Later the same evening, we watched the electrical light parade show. Jakob was not as sure about that parade. I am sure being tired, dark, and all those lights were different for him! We also saw the fireworks to end Tuesday.

Wednesday morning, we woke up and had a decent continental breakfast. Then we were off to Disneyland again. We started the morning with getting our picture taken and then riding the train. We stopped in Toontown where we were able to get ahold of Pluto and Mickey Mouse after waiting in line. I had bought Jakob a signature book where the characters sign and there is also room for the pictures too. We were only able to get those 2 due to bad timing of lines closings, etc. We were all wearing out by Wednesday afternoon and decided we would start heading toward San Diego. Jakob was in a dire need to take a nap.

Randy and Nikki met us at our hotel Wednesday evening. We decided to have dinner at the hotel and sure was a good thing because Jakob was starving and exhausted! Once got food in him, he was a little better.

Thursday morning, we went to the San Diego Zoo. We were there from about 9:00AM-4:00PM. I think we saw most of the zoo, but I know we did not see all of it! We were amazed how large it really was! My pedometer said we walked over 5 miles. The elephant exhibit was truly my favorite. After we finished at the zoo, we stopped for fast food for the boys so they would not be starving by the time we got dinner with Randy and Nikki. We met them at their new house and then had dinner at the Cheesecake Factory. Sure was really good food!

Friday morning, we met Randy at the navy base. After a ceremony, the boys got to look at helicopters. Jakob continued to call them Transformers. The only thing I could think of was Jakob has not really seen helicopters except for in a section in the beginning of Transformers! We had lunch at a golf course and then headed back to the hotel for a break.

Friday evening, we met Nikki's family at a Mexican restaurant. The food sure was good and had a good time visiting with everyone. I took some nice pictures with everyone together after dinner and some great pictures of Randy and the kids!

We had an early flight out of San Diego Saturday morning. Our flight took off at 7:00AM and landed in New Mexico at 9:30AM. I tried to see if there was enough room on the 9:45AM flight, but was completely full! We were initially booked on the 11:30AM flight, but turned out to have many nonrev people wanting to fly too just like us. We ended up getting on the next flight at 1:40PM out of New Mexico. It was the first nonrev flight I had missed based on planning. Not having to pay for the flight sure helps the cost of the vacation, so not a problem!

Overall, we walked over 18 miles last week! You should be getting email links to view all the pictures from the trip. I have sent Disneyland and the San Diego Zoo. The direct links allow you to download them at higher resolutions. However, be advised if you want to download you will need to set it to download and walk away! It will take a little while to download since it is a large file.