On the road...

For family night we always make announcements about what we are going to be doing that week. A couple weeks ago we were going through the days.....Wednesday, mommy has a primary meeting....... daddy has elders quorum visits on Thursday......Rachel has activity days......yada yada yada......And on Saturday, since Kate said she wanted to go to the ocean we thought we'd drive to California and go to the ocean. And while we're there we're going to go to Disneyland!!!!

I got a couple of glances and raised eyebrows. Kate got excited but Rach and Josh just sat there and looked at me like I was crazy. "I'm serious guys, we're going to Disneyland!!!"
Josh: "Are we going to miss school?"
Me: "Yes"
And then he finally got excited.

Rachel: "We're going to have to tell Mrs. James and she'll have to make a packet of work for me to do that I'm going to be missing. We need to let her know."
Me: "WE'RE GOING TO DISNEYLAND AND YOU'RE WORRIED ABOUT THAT?!?"

After a few agonizing minutes of trying to explain that we're actually going it finally sunk in and we were all cheering and dancing around the room. Unfortunately, our "hidden" camera battery died before all that happened so all we have is the awkward talking of trying to convince them it's actually going to happen.

So we got all packed up on Friday then on Saturday morning the voyage began. The kids said that was the longest week of their life to wait for Saturday. I'm just glad we didn't tell them sooner! We drove through a snowstorm to Richfield to visit Trav's brother. We had lunch there and then continued on our journey to St.George for the night. We had some time to kill so we figured we better have a look around St. George, so we went on a little hike. So off to Snow canyon we went!

 It was beautiful!

 We went through this little slot canyon which the kids always love.

 Then we went over to the giant sand hills which for some reason you just have to run and run and run and run on.

 Or flex your muscles......

 Daddy watch where you're going!

 It was gorgeous and a perfect time killer.

Day 2 on the road we drove the rest of the way to California. The trip was long but thanks to the Fablehaven audiobook it flew by so fast! We did sneak a couple conference talks in there to remember it was the Sabbath.

One of my main goals of the trip was to get a picture of Josh next to a Joshua tree.Thank you rest stop!

It was crazy because we got caught in "Vegas traffic." Why anyone actually chooses to go to that dirty place is beyond me, especially if you live in California. But that meant that we were in a traffic jam in the middle of nowhere. It was nuts.

We finally made it and checked into the hotel (which was right across the street). Then with nothing really to do,  we decided to walk through downtown Disney so we wouldn't have to waste precious time doing that the days we were going in the park.

We're walking along, singing our song and I start to notice that there are a lot of people dressed up....like dressed from the 50's and men in suits and hats and canes. I was wondering what the heck was going on. Come to find out it was "Dapper day" at Disneyland. Who knew we would be under-dressed to walk around downtown Disney!

The Disney store is so fun!

 But I think the Lego store was by far the favorite. I think I saw Josh actually drool.

 This is Legos, people, Legos!

 I know that pictures don't do it justice but this dragon was HUGE! We were clear across the street so Trav could fit it all in the picture. That is so amazing! What a fun job to have.

 We can't pass by a fountain without getting all wet.

 We can't wait for tomorrow!!!