To LA and Back Again

Last year we went to Los Angeles to visit my sister Anita and her family during spring break.  We left a snowstorm behind and were playing outside in shorts a few hours later.  On our way home, I turned to Jason and said, "We should do this every year for spring break!" 

So . . . in January I started looking up tickets, and by February we'd booked our flight :)

This time we left early on a cold and rainy morning and were enjoying the sun and sand by the afternoon! 



Although the highlight of our trip was definitely spending time with our family,



Anita took us to some of the most beautiful places in Southern California!  We saw lots of palm trees

and sunshine!

We walked over to see Kya's softball game.

 

Alaina, just outside the gates.


And Janae got to try "surfing" (This is a whole other story that I won't record here.  I'll just say that we'd watched Soul Surfer a few times before we'd left for our vacation, and things didn't turn out quite how Janae had imagined. . . .)

The beach was warmer than we'd expected, and all of the kids got into the water.  Ben had the hardest time leaving--he and Tyson were having so much fun building in the sand.

The following day we went to a huge science center where we saw a space craft called The Endeavor--which had been strapped to an airplane and flown into LAX--then driven through the streets of Los Angeles (including some close to Anita's neighborhood) to the museum.  The kids had fun learning and building, then walking through the rose gardens nearby--we wished we could have stayed longer and done more.

Our next big adventure was a trip to Legoland, near San Diego.

Benjamin LOVES Lego and was looking forward to this part of the trip as much as Janae was looking forward to surfing :)

The weather was perfect, and the kids had lots of fun on the rides (especially once we found some that Alaina was old enough to try!).

There were also lots of Star Wars creations that amazed and inspired Ben (he's been trying to re-create some of the effects since we've got home). 

Another highlight of our vacation was a trip to Malibu where we explored the tide pools and enjoyed the amazing scenery at the beach.  

  

We saw star fish, anemones, crabs, and lots of mussels.  Later we even saw some dolphins jumping in the water, not too far from the shore where we were standing.  I'd never seen anything like it!

And once again the water was warm enough for some of us to enjoy getting wet!

On our last day we squeezed in a trip to Menchie's for some frozen yogurt--just a couple of hours before our flight :)

 It all went by way too fast--but we were happy that when we did come home it was to sunshine and spring weather :)

Today it was back to work (I will write more about Ben's paper route soon!), but we have a week's worth of good memories to keep us going until summer break.

I think we all agree that spring break with Auntie Nita is definitely the way to go!