About: SoCal Sojourn

We are back! I end that with an exclamation - but I'm not excited about it. We had one of those lovely vacations that you just aren't ready to come back from. I'm not sure why we did exactly.. maybe because it felt like we had been there the normal vacation time and so we should go home, but with all of us being free all summer we should've thought it through a little more carefully!

First stop was Bakersfield - we had a really nice, relaxed time being with our family. The kids (and Todd) played, we swam, shopped, explored, went to a movie, and ate all the food and delicious treats to be had in Bakersfield!

These two are inseparable but that doesn't mean they always got along perfectly - it's hard when you both want to be in charge! :)

Aunt Jeran made a nice little tea party for anybody that wanted to join.. my children were more than a little clueless about tea parties, so it was a learning experience for them.

Uncle Lonnie did some small fireworks - who knew they could make such a big mess! (To be fair, Carolina is the only one who got even close to this dirty.)

Todd and I stayed in their airbnb/guest house which was sooo nice and adorable, we should've stayed another day but we thought guests were coming so we kind of packed up and got ready to go before we even realized that no one else was scheduled to stay. I really love Bakersfield - it's not the prettiest town (but neither is Nampa) but there's lots of things to do and it's close to other fun places.. it is a *little* hot there there (111 deg. on Monday).

We went to Downtown Disney for a day just to soak up a little Disney since we had no plans to go to Disneyland. We ate in the Grand Californian which is just magical due to the decor, and service, and even some cool little activity books for the kids. 

Afterwards we did shopping and went in search of a dessert (Oreo churro - overrated) and I tried to get a nice picture... but that son of mine cannot keep his eyes open when he knows he is supposed to. 

We spent the next few days in Riverside with the Michaelsons - they recently bought a house and did a bunch of remodeling. Stephanie and I did work (fun work) on it basically the whole time - we shopped, and hung pictures, decorated shelves, picked blinds and then moved furniture, reorganized, and cleaned. I will say it looked like a very different house by the time we were done! The kids and guys played video games and swam while we were busy - so I really didn't take any pictures except the goodbye one :(

And then we decided to go to Disneyland last minute... but that's a lot more pictures so I'll put it in a different post! 

The next morning we threw everything in the car and drove off without thinking too much about it - and now we are kicking ourselves that we didn't stay at least one more day.  The weather was so nice there (not so nice here), so much to do and see there - we didn't even make it to the beach, and we miss our friends :(