East Coast to West Coast

This summer ended up being one crazy adventure after another. After just one day of being in D.C. Ken's work had a huge emergency at a customers site in San Diego. It was really crazy for him as he tried to handle the situation from the East Coast during the time when he wasn't on-site for the government. The poor guy hardly slept, by the end of the week it was totally apparent that he would need to go to San Diego ASAP.

Our plans were to originally spend a week in D.C., the three day weekend in Philly celebrating July 4th, and then another week in D.C., then go on a family vacation for a week on the East Coast. Instead we packed everything up Friday and left for Texas. We had a really great trip home! We drove straight through and it only took us 24 hours. The kids actually are better when we drive straight through. We spent 20 hours at home, which was precisely just enough time to unpack, do laundry, sleep, go to church and teach Sharing Time, pack up and leave again:-) It was busy but good.

Here is a picture of the smokey mountains. It totally doesn't show up like how it was in person. I have always wanted to see the smokey mountains and they were pretty. After church we drove to San Diego straight through. It took us about 20 hours and was another really great drive. We are totally proud of our kiddos! The way that we are able to drive safely is by taking turns. Ken and I switch off about every 3-4 hours and sleep on the middle bench in the back. We also listen to books on my ipod that really hold our attention when we are driving and the other one of us is sleeping. We actually like long drives because it gives us the opportunity to talk so the switching off sleeping cuts down on some of that but we still talk for a bit before crashing.
As for the kids...it works really well for us when we leave around 4 or 5 pm. They have a few hours to play video games or watch movies but then the girls start to get sleepy around 10 pm. The boys sometimes later. Then none of them wake-up until 8 or 9am. We usually stop for breakfast, change our clothes, pick up a new movie at Redbox (that has got to be the greatest invention ever!) and the kids are good to go for another 6 hours or so in the car.
First stop in California was to In-N-Out!
We went to go check into our hotel but since it was July 4th they weren't ready for awhile. So we headed to the beach. Pretty much the 2nd best thing about California! The boys went wild for Boogie Boarding of course!




The girlies played in the sand.



Darin came out of the water and dug up a sand crab, that entertained us for a good while. We've never seen one before.


This beach was on the side of Coronado Island and had tons of little clams all over the sand. They were all sorts of colors and very pretty.
Ken came in and took Rose out on the board.

But she didn't like the cold water. Not like I can blame her. The weather was a perfect, sunny 75 degrees and the water felt freezing compared to what we are used to. It's nothing like Hilton Head where we were the week before.
More sand crab fun! Nathan talked us into paying him if he would hold it.

They are ugly little suckers.

Even Rose braved holding it. I was pretty shocked. What an adventurous girl!
What trip to the beach is complete without burying everyone in the sand! Me and Darin buried Ginger and tried to make her look like a mermaid. They are so cute together!
Shaking the sand off.
Then we buried Darin. He wanted to be Shark.

Ginger teasing Darin about riding the Shark. Little sisters are in total control when you are stuck in the sand:-)
Ha! She did it, do you see that look in her eye? She certainly is pleased with herself.
Then Rose hopped on him too.
Ahh, poor Darin. Mauled by the little sisters. Guess he wasn't a very terrifying Shark afterall.
Rose wanted to be a Mermaid of course!
Ken and Rose buried Nathan. He wanted to be a dolphin.


After a few hours at the beach we checked into our hotel. We stayed at the Embassy Suites by the San Diego Marina. I stayed here once when I was about 12 and remember being in total AWE of this hotel. It didn't disappoint. It was kind of pricey but Ken said go ahead. So I did! Nothing like taking advantage of your husbands guilt of changing our vacation plans:-)

Here is the living room. Bathroom. I have decided I really, really love granite countertops in the bathroom.
We had a sink area in a bedroom too which was awesome when all 6 of us needed to brush out teeth.
Bedroom.
View of the Bay. Our hotel was right across from the Midway, it was perfect for fireworks.
Another shot of the living room.
And because we didn't go swimming enough, we had to go to the hotel's pool. We played hard all day long, and this was right after our long drive from Texas. That's should really show how much easier it is on us when we drive straight through.
That night we watched the fireworks in the Bay from our hotel room! It was soooooo AWESOME! We could see 3 barges from our room. Here are the kids with their noses pressed to the window. Rose, totally crashed and missed everything.










The show was amazing, We really enojyed it, it was probably even sweeter since we new that back home in Texas all the fireworks were canceled and we couldn't do our normal tradition of lighting off our own. The very best part was that when the show was over we didn't have to fight with crowds or anything. It was a great night. Ginger also fell asleep about halfway through the show. That was one very long 48 hours!