Catching Up: Family California Trip

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This spring, my family celebrated FIVE graduations! First, my brother-in-law Derek graduated from Utah State with a B.S. in Business Management, Accounting Emphasis

Then my other brother-in-law Dan graduated from A.T. Still University Medical School

Then I graduated from Metropolitan State College of Denver with a B.S. in Human Performance and Sport/Adult Fitness, Nutrition Minor

Then Levi graduated from University of Denver Sturm College of Law with his J.D. and an LLM in Taxation

Then my youngest sister Bethany graduated from high school. The last high school graduation in the family!

The day after Bethany graduated, we drove down to Orange County to stay with my grandmamma for a couple of days. It was nice to be able to see her. I think before we moved here I’d seen her around 5 times in my life. My aunt Deanna (my dad’s only sibling) and her husband Steve came out for dinner one evening, so we took a family photo.

We went to sacrament meeting in a local ward, then visited the Newport Beach temple and took pictures. I was 9.5 weeks along at this time and I remember feeling REALLY sick on this day.

On day 3, my family went to Sea World while Levi and I spent the day apartment hunting. We fell in love with the first place we visited and nothing else was able to compare. It’s not the biggest place we looked at, nor is it super posh, but it’s (barely) within our budget and in a good, safe area. We ended the day at the beach and dreamed about how we were going to be living here in just a couple of months.

The next day went to Old Town and the beach again. The highlights of today were visiting the Mormon Batallion Center and eating at Casa de Reyes. Since we had toddlers with us, we decided not to take the tour of the MBC, but played in the back instead. Levi and I had a lot of fun panning for gold, while the kids enjoyed playing with the water pump and making bricks. While we were there we decided to get a new family picture taken.

All dressed up like Batallion members! We're so corny.

Levi searching for his fortune

Gage with the water pump babysitter

Lookin' cool

Casa de Reyes was absolutely delicious! Thinking about it now, I can’t believe Levi and I haven’t gone back for more. Maybe tonight if I haven’t gone into labor?

Day 5—our last day there—was spent at Disneyland! I hung out with my mom, (pregnant) Danika and her 2 year old while Levi went off with Dan, Bethany, Colton and Luke. I remember feeling really sick on this day too and the only thing that helped was super salty popcorn. 

*Side note: my mom was the only one who knew I was pregnant at the time. I told her the day before we left.* 

I was more than happy to ride the little kid rides like Finding Nemo and Alice and Wonderland. Levi had a little more fun riding the roller coasters with the others than if he would have stayed with me, so it worked out perfectly.

Layna was so excited to see Mickey the whole time we were in line. When we got down to it, though, I guess he was a little bit scary. Afterwards she looked at Danika and said Mickey was funny. 

Luke and I showing off our cool drivers licenses

Dan snapped this picture on the Peter Pan ride

Getting into the submarine for Finding Nemo. I have pretty bad claustrophobia so I was really nervous! It ended up being all right, though.

 It's hard to see in this picture, but the last 3 seats are occupied by Colton, Bethany and Dan & Luke. If you zoom in to see their faces, you'll see that Colton likes roller coasters just about as much as I do.