Yeah, About That...: We’re Back from California

Ahh, glad to be back home in Seattle but sad to leave California. We had a fun time the last two weeks but living off of nothing has to end sometime. Why do they call vacations “vacations?” Why don’t they call is “time to be as busy as possible before we have to go back to work and work for a living?”

Man, we were so busy that the most relaxing times was when we were driving to our next destination. Check out this itinerary:

Friday, 11pm Decide that this is the perfect time to leave for Auburn, CA. Drive 15 hours, rest for an hour, and get into Auburn at 3pm the next afternoon.

Sunday Drive 10 hours from Auburn to Newport Beach

Monday Hit Huntington Beach and hang at the ocean with Bree, Lucky’s sister

Tuesday Drive 2 hours from Newport Beach to San Diego

Wednesday Drive to La Jolla and hang at the beach

Thursday Lucky drive back to Huntington Beach for tattoos and come back to San Diego at 6am the next morning

Friday, 9am Leave for Newport Beach with Kyle, say goodbye to Lucky’s grandparents, pick up Anthony in Huntington Beach and drive another 10 hours to Auburn

Saturday Orchestrate massive reunion in Grass Valley for Lucky’s friends Sunday Hit up church, Nevada County Fair

Monday Go to the South Fork of the Yuba River with the kids

Tuesday-Friday Hang out in Auburn/Grass Valley while Lucky tattoos and watch the kids

Saturday, 9am Leave for Seattle and get to Renton in 12 hours

How can it take us 15 hours to get from Renton to Auburn in the middle of the night yet only 12 hours to get back in the middle of the day?? I have no idea. You’ll have to make your own decisions about that one. I do have to say that Kate was amazing on our trip and whined only about 10 minutes the whole time in the car. The whining was actually more of a sad face with big fat tears coming down because she was tired of being in the car. It was really sad to watch because we knew what she was going through and couldn’t do anything about it. For all those getting ready to go on a massive road trip with kids, a portable DVD player is a Godsend. Without the player we would have never stayed awake all night driving to Auburn and Kate wouldn’t have been as good as she was. That and Lucky and I would have never finished season 3 of Lost. We have had that season for a good month or more and never had time to watch it together. Now we only have one more season before we are caught up completely….

In Auburn we stayed with Will and Amanda and their twin boys. They boys are about a month younger than Kate and hard to tell apart when they are running around always getting into things. My mom was right when she said two kids were fine to watch but throw that third kid into the mix and all hell breaks loose. It was crazy when all three kids were together. Braen and Holden are used to fighting each other to get what they want and Kate, being an only child, is used to not having to share with anyone and only fighting with her parents. Not this time. She was beat up and had toys taken away for the first 5 or 6 days until she learned (sort of) to fight back. It wasn’t pretty. There were many times when all of us wanted to backhand her for whining and crying when one of the boys would touch her leg or something and don’t get us started about what she would do when they would take something away from her. Braen and Holden are the cutest, sweetest boys but when the three of them got together they were terrors.

At the Grass Valley Reunion on Saturday I met so many people it was mind blowing. It was quite amusing to put faces to the names and stories that I have been hearing about for years and then hear the same story told by someone I just met. Everyone was really nice, I had previously met more people than I realized, but I felt really comfortable with a select few. The hard part was keeping my eye on Kate and she always wanted to take her shoes off and go into the stream with the other boys. She was so dirty by the time we left that we immediately took a shower when we got back to the house. It was fun for the 7 hours we were at the park but tiring all the same and we all passed out the instant we sat down on the couch.

I definitely need a vacation from my vacation. Oh well, we had fun and that was what we set out to do.

Here are some pics of our trip:

Kate for most of the trip in the car.