The Vacation--Part I

We're back from our epic vacation! I'm going to write all about it. Here's the thing: I know it's sort of boring reading about someone else's vacation. I don't want to be that person that's bragging about how awesome their vacation was and making you feel like crap. But I DO want to write about our vacation so my girls can read about it when they're older, since they probably won't remember much if any of it. Feel free to skip the vacation posts, I won't be offended!

It's too much to try to write it all out in one post, so it'll be several posts over the next few weeks (depending on how much I feel like writing).

So here goes! Part One: The Drive

We started our vacation on Wednesday the 19th. That was Dustin's last day of work. He was frantically trying to finish up cases while I was frantically trying to get the house cleaned and everything packed. We got on the road late but finally made it to southern Utah late that night. We spent the next few days in Circleville visiting with Dustin's family. Saturday we spent the night with Josh and Appols, and Sunday morning we hit the road for a long drive to California!

Grandma Shawny is always willing to play games with the grandkids! 

Give Carson some cars and he's good in the car--for a while at least!

Trying to keep the girls occupied too.

Travelling with a 1 year old, a 2 year old, and a 3 year old, we made a lot of stops. We made pretty good time at first though, and made it to Vegas around 1 in the afternoon. My sister, who lived in Vegas for a few years, told me about an awesome park we could stop and stretch our legs at, so we spent an hour or so at Aliante Nature Discovery Park in North Las Vegas. There was a giant playground, a big dinosaur, a sand pit with fake dino bones to dig up, and a duck pond with a waterfall. The kids loved it.

Josh got too much sunblock in his hands and said, "Who wants some sunblock?" Immediately Eleanor yelled "I do!" and took a big glob and started rubbing it into her hair! She is so funny!

Duck pond,

Playground

Dinosaurs

Sand pit

We were hoping that the kids would fall asleep after playing hard and that we would make good time to the coast, but no and no. Almost immediately after leaving Vegas we hit extreme traffic and spent the next two hours going nowhere fast. And the kids did NOT sleep! It was rough. We finally got going again as the sun was going down, and several long and boring hours later we finally made it to our hotel just in time for very late dinner and bed! The kids were very cranky but luckily they fell asleep fast and slept pretty good that night.

Day One done--stay tuned for Day Two, in which we visit the beach and board the ship!