About: VACATION in Orange County

 We are home! It was a great vacation - but there was some not-so-great parts. I was going to do all of vacation in one post and quickly realized it will take several because I took HUNDREDS of pictures! We headed out Thursday after Todd got off of work and drove to Hawthorne, Nevada the first night - halfway so we could get to our first vacation destination early on Friday. 

 I just love the scenery on this drive...

 It was uneventful, the kids were psyched about the first hotel (it was meh, but when you're a kid a hotel is a hotel I guess). The next day we stopped for brunch in Bishop at the best bakery. 

 And that is where this story takes a turn for the worse. As we kept driving south, through the desert, we noticed it was getting warmer in the car - not too surprising since it was over 100 degrees outside at that point. But by the time we got to Mojave, late morning, it was verrry hot in the car and definitely didn't feel like the air coming out was any cooler at all. We stopped at a po-dunk mechanic who told us our a/c was completely shot. The combustion something something siezed... I don't know but he couldn't fix it, it needed all new parts from Honda. We rolled down the windows since the outside air was actually cooler than the inside air and made it 30 more minutes to a town with a Honda dealership and repair. I literally felt sick from the heat by the time we got there. We spent the entire day there finding out that our car couldn't be fixed until Tuesday and looking at new cars in the lot (this was a stupid idea but we felt very frustrated and stuck and somewhat hopeless) - at any rate it gave us an air-conditioned place to hang out with free water bottles and a TV for the kids. I didn't feel like we would be able to make it to the next town without having heat stroke, so we just hung around until the sun went down and the temps dropped just enough to make it to Riverside. 

 It was heart-breaking to cancel our Santa Barbara visit, but we are so lucky that the Michaelson's could take us in a few nights early. We were exhausted and dehydrated, but we made it safely. 

First thing the next morning Todd and I took the car to their Honda repair center, got our very pricey repair quote, but also got a loaner no-charge. The car was scheduled to be done by mid-day on Tuesday so we crossed our fingers and went off to make the most of our time with friends. While we were gone dealing with the car Stephanie called me so Carolina could tell me that her tooth was about to come out - and it did! Before we even made it back! Steph coached her through it and she couldn't have been more excited to have lost her first tooth!

 California nights aren't too shabby...

 The kids were so happy to be together and played quite well together!

 Sunday was beach day! We all went to Crystal Cove - which is where Steph and I had gone when I visited her in February.

 Lands, the amount of stuff we had to carry down the cliff was insane - but we stayed all day and had a great time!

 These crazy kids actually got in the water! It was a warm day, but not hot and the water was freezing! Lina's favorite part was just playing in the sand.

  The boys played can-jam and spike ball.

 I mostly just stared at the ocean.

 ... and took pictures...

  

  

  

Right before it was time to leave we discovered this little waterfall down one of the cliffs - so pretty. I LOVE that beach! We went into Newport for dinner and ate at an insanely popular and delicious old Italian restaurant and had a delicious coffee and headed home with about 15 extra pounds of sand in the car. 

   The next week Coe had a kids soccer camp to run and the boys were all attending. So Stephanie, Todd, Lina and I ran around Riverside for fun.

 Their downtown really is beautiful!

 Then we spent the day being lazy by the pool, getting laundry done and packing up, and got some  In-N-Out for dinner (because California). It was a great visit with them, as always! 

To try and make up for our lost "just us" vacation time we decided that if our car was truly done Tuesday as promised that we would spend a day/night in Los Angeles - Santa Barbara was just a little too far out and back in to make it work unfortunately. But the car was ready even a little early, so we happily paid to have our own working car back and headed to L.A. without much of a plan - so not like us...