The Story of A Family: 2011

Saturday, December 31, 2011

Visit with The Windsors

Part of the reason for our trip down south was to meet up with our good friends the Windsors from North Carolina. Alisa is from San Diego so they were spending Christmas on the west coast. We had to take advantage of being on the same coast so we planned to meet up for New Years. We spent New Years Eve day seeing the sights of San Diego with Alisa as our tour guide.....

We headed to Seal Beach in La Jolla to see the seals.....

Johnny tried to get a little too close to the seals....

The kids did not cooperate with their pictures this day....

Then we headed to Oceanside pier. I grew up coming to this pier and hadn't been back for a while so it brought back great memories of spending hours and hours at the beach with my family...

And I had to have a giant pickle while on the pier...of course! I remember running to the pier in the summer in my swimsuit to buy one of these giant pickles. There was nothing better on a hot day than walking down the beach with an ice cold giant pickle. For those of you that are judging....next time you are at the beach and need a snack and cool down give it a try...it is fabulous.

We had a wonderful time though our visit made us very homesick for Greensboro. We love you Alisa and Jason and can't wait till our next reunion.

Thursday, December 29, 2011

San Diego

One of the great things about moving to California is our ability to drive down to San Diego. I was born and lived in San Diego until I was eleven and both of my parents were born and raised in Southern California. So we still have a lot of families that we love dearly that live down south. One of these dearly loved families is my Aunt Porky (long story but she won't let me call her anything else) and my cousins Lianne and Emily. I hadn't seen them since Emma was born so we were very excited to be reunited. We spent the afternoon playing at the beach on Coronado Island.

Emma ADORED the girls as I knew that she would. Loved playing with the big girls.

Johnny was his cute self and Lianne was so sweet and loving toward him. She took him wherever he wanted to go, played the way he wanted to play, and made sure he was ok at all times. This made for a very relaxing visit for John and I.

It was such a wonderful visit with great conversation. My Aunt Porky is one of those people I could talk to all day. She is such a great listener and a fun person to be around. I have really missed seeing her over the years and am glad we are close enough to visit more often.

We were all sad to say goodbye and looking forward to our next visit!!

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Disneyland

After Christmas we headed down south to visit friends that live in San Diego. On our way down we decided to make an impromptu visit to Disneyland. The kids did not really know what Disneyland was so when we told them we were going they didn't quite have the reaction we thought they would (you know, the ones that make you cry on the Disney commercials). But after a wonderful day at the happiest place on earth I am sure they will be jumping up and down next time we tell them we are going......

Standing in our first line for Peter Pan. We were at Disneyland on the 28th of December which is one of the busiest days at the park (the day before the park actually closed at around 3 due to being at full capacity). We got there right when it opened and tried to go on all of the popular rides we could before the huge lines started. We didn't end up spending as much time in line as we expected because the kids couldn't ride the really popular rides so we had a great time visiting all of the lands and riding the rides I remember as a child.

Riding "It's a Small World"

Meeting Tinkerbell. As you can see Emma is excited. Johnny.....not so sure. By the way, this was probably our longest wait...just to take a photo with Tinkerbell. So Enjoy...this is 40 minutes of our lives we can never get back...

Our most adult ride was Pirates of the Caribbean. Johnny and Emma sat in the front with John and my parents and I sat behind. Emma loved it but Johnny was glued to John the entire ride. After every other ride he exclaimed "more! More!" After this one, he said "scary...no ride"

In the Sleeping Beauty Castle.....

In Tarzan's tree house.....

We skipped the parade to hit some more rides but did catch a princess show where Emma learned how to dance like a princess. Like she needs any more encouragement in her princess ways....

The Jungle Cruise was as awesome as I remembered it....

The new Buzz lightyear ride was a favorite with the kids. You got to shoot bad guys with lasers and got points while spinning around. A twenty minute wait for this defiantly beat Tinkerbell...

The park was all decorated for the holidays and the castle was pretty amazing at night....

We got to the park at 8am when they opened and left at 9pm after a fabulous day. This was one of those experiences I couldn't wait to have with my kids and it exceeded my expectations. Can't wait for our next visit!