A rare Vacation. . . .

Ladd and I take our children river rafting every year.  We go camping and hiking when we can.  We attend family reunions in various places.  We also spend several days up at Deer Valley letting Ladd and the children up their skiing skills.  But, we rarely take our family on a REAL vacation.  It's not that we don't want to.  It's finances and time conspiring against us.  Oh, and our van is ancient.  It even squeaks.  It takes a deep breath to simply consider risking a vacation in our van.  But, this last Spring Break, we finally did it!  We had a REAL vacation.  By a REAL vacation, we mean sleeping in a motel and going to exotic places that cost serious money for a family with ten children.  So, what did we do?  We went to California!  We left on April 4th at 9 at night since James, Mckenzie and I were either helping with or performing in the Elementary musical.  We drove up to the curb of my parent's home rather late (or early depending on your perspective!).  We crashed on floors, beds, and couches.  Said a brief hello to my folks, and then headed off for a day of driving to California.  We listened to General Conference during the day.  I was afraid our reception wouldn't be very good, but we caught most of the first two sessions.  We found our motel to be a little wanting -- especially since our oldest five were in a hotel room down the walkway with numerous rooms in between ours.  And, we soon found the continental breakfast to be lacking in choices. But, we got unloaded and I took James with me to walk across the street to Taco Bell to find us something to eat for dinner.  We all ate and watched TV (Ladd and the boys watched the Priesthood session) before starting baths.  Sunday, we watched the last two sessions of General Conference, then went on a very long drive!  We finally found one of the temples in the Los Angelos area, ate a bit of dinner in the parking lot, walked around the temple taking pictures, and ended our visit in the visitor's center.  Afterwards, we drove for quite awhile trying to find the Hollywood sign on the side of the mountain.  We got back fairly late, and after prepping for Disneyland, we went to bed.  We got off to Disneyland a little bit later than hoped, and joined the hoards of people all walking to Disneyland.  Our hotel was supposed to be only two blocks away from Disneyland.  I knew the blocks were going to be long blocks, but I'm convinced that whoever wrote that description didn't know how to count.  It took forever to walk there.  And, we were tired when we got there!  We found out at the gate that we couldn't take our cooler on wheels into the park with us, so there was some trouble trying to find a locker for it, and meet up afterwards, but finally, we were able to walk into Disneyland.  We spent some time doing some of the smaller children rides, but we eventually split up so the older kids could go on some older rides.  Thankfully, we made use of the stroller rule and the fast track lines, so I was able to go on some of the older rides, too.  Unfortunately, Alyssa and Shalyn didn't like that very much!  We saw a mickey mouse show that showcased several different Disney shows which all of the kids liked.  For lunch, we went out of the park to the locker and ate our lunch there.  We did our very best to ride as many rides as we could, and keep going until our time was up, but we were all tired out quicker than the closing hour.  We also couldn't bring ourselves to pay for dinner within the park, so we tried to wait until we left to eat.  We limped back towards our hotel, stopping at the Carl's Jr. next door to assuage our growling tummies at 9 at night.  There was some discussion as to where to go the next day, and we finally decided on Sea World.  Tuesday, we finally got into the car, and drove down to San Diego to go to Sea World.  We saw some of the shows, saw lots of animals in exhibits, and rode as many rides as we could.  I believe I tried three different times to ride one particular ride.  The ride was shut down the first two times I tried!  We split up lots during the afternoon.  Ladd and I even got to go on a ride by ourselves.  The older kids and Ladd went places while I watched the younger kids, then I went on a couple of rides with Ruby while Ladd watched the youngest girls and the older kids did their own things.  When the older kids went off by themselves, they got onto a ride that shut down while they were on it!  They sat suspended for 20 minutes before the ride continued!  What an experience!  We finally tried meeting up right at closing time only to discover that Alyssa was missing.  We split up and searched.  I tried going to the lost and found (the place I was directed to by security).  People kept telling them things like, "I've lost my armani sunglasses."  Finally, I was able to have my turn, and right as I started giving them Alyssa's description, James came to find me and tell me she had been found.  Both Garrett and James claim to be the ones who found her.  Thankfully, Alyssa didn't feel lost.  She was in a store trying on sunglasses.  Sure gave us all a scare!!  We finally got all of us bathroomed and into the car.  We were all starving, so we stopped off at Costco for some pizza, and Ladd and I picked up quite a few other things for us to eat throughout the rest of the week.  We decided to go to the beach on Wednesday.  It included a trip down a magnificently long strip of stairs.  Not fun carrying all our stuff down there!  But, we all had fun!  That night, I did some laundry, and we ate leftovers.  On Thursday, we went to California Adventure Park.  This time, we drove and parked in the parking lot and took the shuttle. We ate tortillas for lunch.  We hit all the major rides much to Alyssa and Lena's chagrin.  I did feed them quite a few skittles to placate them.  We watched part of a parade, and thought we had lost Alyssa for a few minutes.  She had just decided to move to a different table than the one we were at.  The older kids discovered the cartoon drawing place, and wanted to do that hour after hour.  Finally, Ladd and I took the young girls back to the hotel.  The older kids saw some of the light show at night, and just walked home when they were done.  Friday morning, I dropped Ladd and the oldest nine children off at Disneyland so I could do some cleaning and organizing and packing.  I also heated up the chimichungas before I took Shalyn and headed off for Disneyland.  I finally met up with everyone.  Evidently, they had spent most of the morning getting signatures of Disney Characters.  We ate chimichungas, and went to see It's a Small World (it had been closed before that).  We saw the parade, saw another show (Beauty and the Beast?), and at a few snacks at the Golden Horseshoe before watching the show there.  We crammed in the favorite rides at night.  We also bought something for everyone before the park closed.  Saturday, we packed everything up, and headed for Universal Studios.  We really didn't feel like we did everything we could've done there, but we went on some of their big 3-D rides and took the tour.  Finally, we decided it would have to do, and headed out of the park.  We loaded in, and got on our way back to St. George just before it got dark.  We stopped at a McDonald's and made them widen their eyes at our order.  We traveled all night, and got into bed around 4 or 5 in the morning.  We finally dragged ourselves to a Sacrament Meeting at a different church than my parents' ward.  We spent some time visiting before we loaded in and drove back to our home here in Saratoga Springs.  And thus ended our REAL vacation.  Now, I don't know how other people do REAL vacations, but this is how we did ours.  We played hard, skimped on sleeping and food, and found ourselves exhausted by the time we were done.  But, we had fun while we were there!!!

February, huh? I'm not sure I remember February. . . .

I'm pretty sure we skipped February.  Oh, and March.  And jumped over April.  It's Easter today!!!  The last I wrote was February 4th.  It's a good thing I've got my brain called my calendar.  :)  Hopefully, what I write will make sense since it all seems like a blur. . . .   (Turning pages in my calendar now.)

The end of my last post summarized most of my last three months.  Cali had leadership for marching band with dance on its heels on Monday.  Jarom had drumline on Tuesday and Thursday.  Mckenzie had activity days on every other Tuesday, and tumbling on Thursday.  YM/YW's happened mostly on Tuesday nights.  James worked on his math homework at Gage Bentley's house on Monday and Wednesday after school until 5 (usually).  James had 11 year old scouts on Tuesdays, but eventually it was switched to Wednesdays when Ladd was called as the 11 year old scout leader.  Ruby had dance on Wednesday.  Cecilia had winterguard on Thursday nights and Saturdays.  Some practices on Saturday went only for the morning starting sometimes at 6 a.m., and other times, she had competitions that went all day long -- usually until 10:30 p.m.  Garrett started adding in "Army of Helaman" meetings every now and again on Thursday evenings.  Mckenzie had play practices on Mondays and Fridays after school.  Near the middle of March, James joined her to work on the tech crew.  They entrusted him with all of the mikes.  In his own words, "It's all on my shoulders!"  Cali usually had a wind symphony clarinet sectional sometime during the week -- often on Friday mornings at 6:45 a.m.  Garrett and Cali had Deer Valley almost every Saturday.  In February and some of March, Garrett had an ACT prep class on Tuesday and Thursday after school.  Garrett and Cali also added playing on a cousin's basketball junior jazz basketball game that their Uncle Jamie coached.  Their games were most Fridays through February and March.  Some Tuesday nights, Ladd would play basketball with some ward members at 9 p.m.  Garrett, Cali, and Jarom started adding in things like:  band festivals (choir festivals for Jarom as extra), solo and ensemble, band competitions, and band practices for all of those plus the concerts themselves.  We registered Cali, then James, and finally Cecilia for their year next year.  In February, Ruby had her doughnut date.  And, Garrett, Cali, Cecilia, and Jarom had Youth Conference to finish off the month.  In March, it seemed we went through a couple of weeks where everything seemed to be broken.  I'm not quite sure of the list now, but I do know our dryer gave us a run for our money.  It seemed the dryer-fixer-person came several times before we finally solved all of its problems.  Ladd and I went to a recognition dinner for his work.  I had a Stake Relief Society dinner I went to one Thursday evening.  Garrett had appointments with the orthodontics and the urologist.  I had an appointment with my foot doctor.  Shalyn had her one year old birthday!  We had Stake Conference as well as the first general women's meeting where Mckenzie went with me along with the older girls!  I also started helping out at James and Mckenzie's play practices.  I must say, James was entrusted with the job of taking care of the mikes.  He was one of two people they let do that particular job, and James did a fantastic job!  In April, we fit in Mckenzie and James' play performances before we slipped off at 9 at night to start our Spring Break vacation!  Our nephew and some friends stayed at our house while we were gone.  We stopped off at St. George for a couple of hours of sleep at my parent's house, then listened to General Conference on the trip down to California, and then once we got to our hotel as well.  The rest of the week was spent going to Disneyland, California Adventureland, Sea World, Universal Studios, and the Beach.  We stopped off in St. George briefly on our way back, and made it back in time for classes and work and such.  On the 18th, we had a birthday party for a cousin at a park with some of my siblings.  The 19th of April was full of helping with fundraisers for marching band, Cecilia trying out for color guard, Easter Egg hunts, playing at Mapleton with family, and a date that Garrett and his cousin doubled on.  And, that brings us to Easter!!!  One of the kids was sick, so I stayed home from church.  The choir sang in my absence.  And that is that! Whew!