8 Days Until California Vacation - Brother's Wedding!

We are now down to 8 more days until we leave for my brother's wedding in California!  My to-do list is coming along and I'll have it all done before we leave of course!  While speaking to my mom, she just told me it was 65 degrees at 4:20PM (PST).  I may have to rethink what I was planning to wear out there this summer!

• Southwest Airlines Reservations
• Hotel Reservation
• Rental Car Reservation
• Jakob - Measured for Tux - completed and $20 deposit paid on Wednesday, June 30th.
• Lisa - Need Dress to wear for wedding - Found purple dress at JcPenney's on Monday, July 5th!
• Lisa - Need shoes to wear with dresses - Planning to go to SAS next Tuesday, July 27th!
• Shoes - Need new walking tennis shoes for Jeff, Lisa, Roland, and Jakob - We will look for Jakob's shoes and clothing next Tuesday (maybe sooner).
• Jakob - Needs Coloring book for airplane, down time. - Purchased a Toy Story 3 Color Wonder coloring book.
• Jakob and Roland - Needs nice clothes to wear to wedding (Roland needs slacks)
• Update Garmin with California Destinations

After the wedding, Jeff and I are planning to go to Sea World, San Diego Zoo, and Lego Land.  My parents and grandmother will also go to the San Diego Zoo on Monday.  I just read about San Diego Zoo doing a special "NightTime Zoo" between 3pm-9pm.  It looks like they have some extra events going on between the time period.  I'm always amazed at the discounts you can find online if you look for them!

After doing some searches, I came across a website called, MouseSavers.com.  One of the deals mentioned was 50% off tickets for Airline employees and one additional guest.  This was my first time to view this website, so I called the zoo and sure enough it is true!  The other deals I am finding our about $4 coupon/ticket.  I also found that the Carlsbad Premium Outlets center (not far from LegoLand) is offering one FREE 1-Day pass to the San Diego Zoo when you purchase a Simon Gift Card valued at $100 or more.  After reviewing the policies of the Simon Gift Cards, it mentions they can be used anywhere Visa is accepted!!  I will have to call tomorrow and see if they still have the tickets available.

While looking for discounts for Sea World in San Diego, I found a pretty good discount.  I sure wish Roland could look like he was 11 still, but he is going on 14 and is too tall to look 11!  His ticket could be free too.  On MouseSavers.com, I found a coupon code from McDonalds making adult tickets $59 and kids free with a paying adult.

For our last destination, Lego Land, I received a Free Kids ticket when you purchase an adult ticket from the Lego Store after purchasing a toy for Jakob.  According to MouseSavers.com, Lego Land offers a 20% discount for up to 6 tickets for Airline employees!

Overall, I have calculated about a savings of $214 from these different coupon codes.  If we do the Simon Visa Giftcard, it would be another $37.  I sure love finding great deals!

21 Days Until California Vacation - Brother's Wedding!

   

We are now down to 21 more days until my brother's wedding in California! Last week, I posted a similar post and we have done a few things on the list!  However, the list continues to grow as we get closer to the event!  I helped my mom yesterday with the rehearsal dinner menu.  They chose Buca de Bippa and since they chose the restaurant, my parents were able to choose the food!  So while Mom looked at the choices, she called me for help in the decisions!  All I can say is we are going to be well fed that evening!  However, since we will be eating later than normal plus we have a two hour time difference, we are going to have to feed the boys (and probably me) before our official dinner!

• Jakob - Measured for Tux - completed and $20 deposit paid on Wednesday, June 30th.
• Lisa - Need Rehearsal dinner dress
• Lisa - Need Dress to wear for wedding - Found purple dress at JcPenney's on Monday, July 5th!
• Lisa - Need shoes to wear with dresses
• Shoes - Need new walking tennis shoes for Jeff, Lisa, Roland, and Jakob
  
• Update Garmin with California Destinations
• Wedding Present
  
• Jakob - Needs Coloring book for airplane, down time. - Purchased a Toy Story 3 Color Wonder coloring book.
• Jakob and Roland - Needs nice clothes to wear to rehearsal and wedding
• Jakob and Roland - New video game for airplane, down time.

• Tickets for San Diego Zoo
• Tickets for Sea World
• Tickets for Lego Land (1 FREE Kid Ticket from the Lego Store)

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.

3 more weeks until California!

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Only 3 more weeks until our vacation to California! I have entered the airports, hotels, and attractions into the GPS! I am sure I will add a few more between now and the trip!

Here's last week's update:
Last week went fast and we did a random amount of things. Overall, I walked 11.4 miles last week!

Last Sunday, we went to the pool for about an hour. It was pretty busy since it was the Memorial holiday weekend. The boys enjoyed it and played! They did not want to leave when it was time to go. Roland primarily played in the regular pool while Jakob and Jeff hung out in the kid splash zone pool. I took pictures this day!

On Memorial Day, I got together with a bunch of Jakob's friends and moms and we all went to Boomerang's. It is a place with about 6-7 bounce houses and the kids played non stop for about 5 hours!! They ran and ran...the people would blow the whistles and tell them to walk. I think they got tired of telling them and stopped after a while because there were hardly any kids there!

Tuesday, I was all ready and dressed to sub for a teacher when I woke Jakob up to find he was running a low-grade fever and half sick. I turned on the closet light and he said he didn't want to get up. Okay...that is not Jakob! He's the one waking me up bright and early everyday!! I knew something was wrong. He told me he didn't want to get up and he was sick. I told him if he was sick he would have to stay home and take medicine and stay in bed. He said okay. I reminded him the 'blue' medicine (he hates it!) and he was like okay. I was sorta shocked that he said he would take the blue medicine and stay in bed. I knew he didn't feel well. I sent an email and canceled my sub job. He ended up in bed all day watching tv or movies. He didn't attempt to do much else. (However...I think he shared his cold a little, as it hit me Friday evening/Saturday.)

The Ford Explorer was coming due for it's annual inspection. I decided to take the day to go get it inspected. It is now 10 years old and I sure could tell when the maintenance employee called me outside with the paperwork. He told me it failed! I was slightly shocked because Jeff and his dad just did so much work to it about a month ago! Turns out the brake master cylinder was leaking and needed to get fixed. Great! I had just figured out that Jakob could stop going to school on June 5th to cut back a week of daycare ($175) and instead was rewarded with fixing the Ford! lol So on Thursday, we took the Ford back into the shop and they fixed it and re-inspected the Ford. It passed, so we are good for another year! Hopefully, as much work that has been done lately between Jeff and his dad, Gregg, it should go for quite some time again. I really do not want another car payment right now!!

We have started walking around the apartment complex in the evenings after dinner. It tends to be after 7pm once it is not so hot. Wednesday, we did a short walk around the complex. Jakob walked and ran the entire way. Our initial plan was to have Jakob ride his bicycle, but I forgot about the garage opener which was in the Ford. We had dropped it off at the Kwik Kar that evening so we didn't have to deal with it in the morning. We did get the car back on Thursday. I took it to get washed and vacuumed before picking Jakob up from school. Sure smells good!

I subbed on Friday for a math teacher. This week is the last week of school. I went ahead and decided I could use the week vacation before the next 10 weeks of keeping kids busy and going nonstop!

We took a good walk on Friday evening. Jeff and I walked while Jakob rode his bicycle. We decided it was nice out so we went ahead and had him ride his bike while we walked to the playground. It works out to be at least 2.62 miles roundtrip, with a playground stop in the middle! Jakob loves every minute of it!

This past Saturday and Sunday, I slept a lot! As mentioned, I think whatever Jakob had on Tuesday was shared to me! Doing better now, but still coughing and slight running/stuffy nose. Initially, I thought it was allergies, but I have no clue. At this point, I am assuming it was some bug Jakob was generous to give me!

More California plans

Today, I worked on some more of our travel plans to California. Between talking to Mom and a few email communications from my brother and girlfriend, we were able to decide on our hotels. Our first two days are planned at Disneyland and then we will head down to visit Randy and Nikki in the San Diego area. Based on a couple emails Randy sent, Mom and I contemplated which hotel to reserve and finally came to a decision. Tonight, I worked on finding a rental car that was not too expensive. We found one and have it reserved. I'm looking forward to our trip. It appears we have 37 more days until we leave!

California Trip Plans

Here is a basic itinerary of our California trip that we are working on!

Day 1 - Disneyland
Day 2 - Disneyland
Day 3 - San Diego Zoo
Day 4 - Site see around San Diego
Day 5 - Fly home

Mailbox Monday

My mailbox was full this week! Here's what I received:

Eucerin Hand Lotion sample with $1.00/1
Jergens Natural Glow Moisturizer sample with $1.00/1
True Delights by Quaker with $1.00/1
Cottenelle Toilet Paper sample $1.00/12 pack
Cottenelle Fresh Flushable Moist Wipes with $0.50/1
Old Spice High Endurance Body Wash with $1.00/1
Poise Liner
California 2009 Official State Visitor's Guide
Conde Nast Traveler Magazine

What a great week! I love the free health samples, especially since we are taking a trip to California in June! How's your mailbox this week?

Trip to California

Mom and I are planning a trip to California to see Randy and Nikki. In our early stages of planning, we know we will visit Disneyland and the San Diego Zoo. We know Roland and Jakob will love both of those! It appears we will go around the third week in June. I'm excited!

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Planning a San Diego Trip

Sometime in July, it appears Roland, Jakob, and I will make a trip out to San Diego, CA and visit Randy and Nikki. Today, I purchased a travel guide which focuses on the Top 10 things to see and do! I know we would visit the San Diego Zoo at this point, but I need to figure out the rest! I have to look and determine the best time to fly stand-by through Southwest Airlines.