Friday was our day to just sleep-in (or try to) and recoup after our busy week. Here's the outside of the condo we stayed at. The kids had fun playing outside when they could.
However, we had been too busy to focus much on homework while in Disneyland, so we had to do some homework that day. Cedric loves the Mr. and Little Miss books, so I brought some of those to read.
Lily, Grandpa and Tom had math competitions with Lily's homework. It's nice that Tom's so good at math and can help the kids in that area.
The little girls had fun just watching movies and playing.
We still wanted to buy a few more souvenirs so we took one more trip over to Disneyland and went to the World of Disney store in Downtown Disney. However, I came over later because our niece, Brooklyn (who lives in Oceanside) came up to visit and I had to meet her, then take her car a few blocks to park it at the Walmart (because the visitor pass for the condo was missing and we didn't want her car to get towed). Then we came back to the condo to drop off the van, then walked and took the tram over to Downtown Disney to meet up with everyone else. The store is overwhelmingly fun and Sophie had a hard time picking out her souvenir. She ended up getting a bag with a little Tinker Bell doll with accessories in it.
After shopping, we went back to the condo to enjoy the pool for the first time the whole trip. Lily was complaining about her back hurting. She thought it was due to her kitten leaving scratch marks on her back and then the sweat irritating them. However, when she got on her swim suit I noticed she had a rash all over her back! We have no idea where the rash came from, but we put some hydro-cortisone cream on it and it must have gone away.
The kids had a lot of fun swimming. They even had a nice, big shallow pool for the little kids.
Here's Tom and Maren with our niece, Brooklyn. She's expecting a baby in January and her husband is currently deployed in the middle east so she was so excited to come visit us.
The kids always love when their dad swims with them.
We decided to make dinner in the condo that night and eat all our leftovers too. It really helped saving money by having a kitchen and cooking our food.
The next day was Saturday. We had to pack up and leave the condo, so we headed down to Laguna Beach and met up with Brooklyn again.
It was hot and we didn't find any beach toys at the store, so we were excited when Brooklyn walked over with an umbrella and lots of fun beach toys.
Tom had bought some boogie boards on clearance at home and brought them for the beach. He had fun teaching the kids how to boogie board.
But in all reality, he had more fun boogie boarding himself.
Lily didn't like the boogie board much. I'm not a fan of beaches at all (who likes dangerous, salty water full of leaving creatures, sand you can't escape from, no shade and the continuous smell of fish?). So we took a pouty picture together.
Brooklyn brought her mermaid tail and had fun waving to little kids when they walked by. (Some strangers even stopped to get their picture with her.)
Tom had a little too much fun on the boogie board and got quite the gash on his shoulder.
We cleaned up the best we could and then ate some lunch on a park bench.
Then we said good bye to Brooklyn, as well as Tom and his parents. They (Tom and his parents) were headed up to Pasadena to watch the BYU vs UCLA game at the Rose Bowl stadium.
So Maren and I took five kids and headed toward Primm Nevada.
Luckily, the drive wasn't too bad since three (nearly four) of the five kids slept half the drive.
We stopped at a food court in Barstow Station, which was a bad idea because the kids just wanted to run around and touch everything in the gift shops. We managed to get them to eat a little dinner before we got back on the road.
We didn't get to Primm until 9pm. The kids were wrestling and jumping around after being in the car for four hours. The place smelled and was dirty, but all we needed were beds for the night, so we made it work. Maren wanted to go down to the casino, so once the kids were all asleep, I sat in her room with Charlotte while she was gone. I sat and watched movies on my iphone until 1:30am. I was pretty tired after driving and being up late, so it felt nice to finally fall asleep. Just about that time (2am), Tom and his parents were arriving and I had to get up to let him in.
We were going to get up early enough to make it to church Sunday morning, but with the late night and Tom not feeling well, it didn't work out. He thinks he got food poisoning and was pretty sick. He also seemed to be catching a flu bug as well.
For breakfast, the kids and I just ate cheese curds and apple sauce squeezers in the room. Since it wasn't a lot of food and almost lunch time by the time we were leaving, we swung into Burger King to get some chicken nuggets and Icees.
Then we were ready to finish the long drive back home.
Tom was so sick he had me drive and he tried to sleep. I had a really hard time staying awake, but thanks to a bag of cinnamon bears I managed to make it all the way to Cedar City before we stopped again and I had to have him drive.
We made it home around 8pm and spent the rest of the night unpacking and doing laundry. Despite Tom being sick, he ended up cleaning the turtle tank because the neighbor that took care of the turtle must've overfed him or something. The whole tank was black and smelled so bad! We were surprised the turtle was still alive. Lily was eager to go pick up her kitten from another neighbor too. She really missed her.
The kids had a hard time going to bed that night, since they were still on California time and used to staying up until 10-11:00 every night. They had an even harder time getting up for school the next day, but I wasn't about to let them miss another day. However, Tom did take a sick day from work so he could rest. It also helped me out to have him home.
So ends another fun Disneyland adventure. We hope to return back soon.
