California Vacation - Day 2

Happy Birthday to the BEST husband ever!! Who else would spend their 30th birthday driving through California!? We slept in two different rooms, the boys and Molly with Jerry and the little girls with me. Our room slept for 10 hours and it sounds like their room slept about 4 hours. The girls were in such great moods when we woke up, they all got dressed and put their shoes on and we went to wake up the other room! It only took us about 10 minutes to pack them back up and get in the car. I had packed breakfast again; yogurt and protein bars.

   

 After we drove out of the hotel parking lot the angels sang out and the skies parted, suddenly out of no where a giant hand appeared out of the clouds and pointed straight in front of us... A Starbucks, with a rainbow over the top was across the street. Thank you Jesus. 

 We began our 6 hour journey South, and hopped on the freeway. Almost immediately, after we left the city, our gas light turned on we made it to the gas station and Jerry grabbed some mini donuts for the kids, who ate a record breaking 36 donuts in under 4 minutes. They're like little piranhas back there!

For being a little two year old baby, Mae spent ALL of her time coloring and really enjoyed it! I was not at all anticipating this, so it was such a nice surprise! 

   

 We made two quick bathroom stops, then one last gas stop. After we filled the tank I ran next door to Walgreens to grab something, it was absolutely the craziest stop! There were about 20 complete tweakers in there. Seriously this woman started pounding on our window demanding cash. We aren't in Orting anymore, Toto! We realized there are some places in LA we just shouldn't stop! So as we were discussing it, we accidentally got off on the wrong exit (people, exits for days) and had to drive through a really shady area!! I'm talking about vans with Jesus painted on them and a woman limping out into the middle of the street and giving someone cash in exchange for a small bag of flour... Or some other white powdery substance! Eek!!

   

 The last hour of our trip was SO stressful! Up until then really we didn't have any arguments or crying or fits or bathroom emergencies or anything - but that last hour was mostly tears and someone yelling they were thirsty and someone touched someone... And it was such crazy traffic... Phew, we were so excited to make it to the hotel!! Our rooms are so nice, but not overkill. Just really clean and symmetrical feeling. 

   

 (These are stock photos but besides the headboard on the bed being creme and not dark brown, it's all the same) 

 

 We took Jerry to King Lobster Palace for his 30th Birthday dinner and it was so good.

   

 Mae was in love with the tea! 

   

 After dinner Joe leaned over to me and said, "I think we should get dessert for Dad... there's a 31 flavors next door!" So we took "Daddy" to ice cream. Ha.

 

 

 Since leaving the hotel in Sacramento in the morning, we reminded the kids all day that good behavior would get them a swim in the pool - on our first day there, after dinner. We had looked online and showed the kids the pool and the hot tub... it all looked so amazing. But when we got back to the hotel after dinner, we went to look at the pool hours and saw that it was CLOSED! It had a little sign on the door that said it was closed with a reopen date of December 2015, then a sticker slapped over the top that said, January 2015 and then a sticker over the top of that that said March 2015. We were all incredibly disappointed. The hotel really should have disclosed that to us when we made reservations. I looked into switching hotels, but it ended up not working out. 

 Everyone has done such a great job, I've probably done the worst, snapping at the kids and telling Joe if he used his Mickey voice one more time I would strangle him. It was just a really long second day of travel. Seriously have gray hairs from driving through LA during rush hour. People would just pull their car in front of you and everyone was honking at everyone! There were also 4000 exits. Every two seconds there was another exit. Thank God for apple maps. 

I bathed the girls and put them all to bed. Jerry and the boys were in a room two doors down from us. 

Sam can't decide if he is more excited to be at Disneyland for a week or miss a week of school! :) 

Everyone fell asleep again in record time, and tonight I was even able to sneak out underneath Mae and take a shower.

   

 Pure bliss. 

 On to Disney tomorrow!!!