Families are Forever: California fun

This is for you Paula!

So we have been back from Califonia for about a week and a half now and I am getting slack about not posting any pictures on my blog so here I go. We spent 2 1/2 weeks visiting my parents in California. We decided to drive and the kids did great, a lot better than i thought they would. So the first 5 days Mark got to spend with us but then he had to go home. While he was with us we visited the Golden Gate Bridge which was way cool and walked around Fishermans Wharf, by this point in time we were frusterated because I didn't listen to Mark when he said we need to change Tyler and sure enough...he leaked through all over and his shorts were sopping wet. I jumped out of the car to try and find something for him to wear with no luck...out of all the stores on the wharf no pants..hello!! So we ended up walking with him without pants on until we found a baby gap which luckly had pants. Its amazing how totally different an expeience can be in California when its just your little family, but it was a lot of fun...oh not to mention the fun before we even got to San Fransico. Me being stupid forgot to grab a stroller and there was no way in you know what that we were going to wander around SF with a 2 yr old, so we stopped at a Wal-mart(which after the fact my mom said wasn't a good area...how are we supposed to know?)well we got our stoller and started heading toward the checkout, while trying to figure out which checkstand to go to Mark wanders over to the candy with Tyler, i checked out and then Shaylee and I started looking for Mark who was supposed to have Tyler, when I asked "where's Tyler?" he responded by "I thought he was with you!" NOPE neither of us had Tyler, talk about being scared out of your mind, your 2 yr old is misssing in a strange wal-mart in California! We immediately started running though the store looking for him when one of the assocaites told us to go to customer service and they would have everyone look for him, so I did that and after about 10 mins, which was the longest in my life, i heard the lady say can you confirm he is with the dad and ahh there was a sigh of relief, so here comes Mark and Tyler holding a 500 count of water baloons (the boy is obsessed), and we still to this day don't know how he got those, but we all learned a lesson that day, don't let Tyler wander through the store with us and always keep an eye on him because he is fast!

After all the fun of SF the next day we decided to go to Santa Cruz with my mom and dad and just have a relaxing day at the beach...it was FAR from that. First of all the traffic was so bad it took us 2 hrs just to get to Santa Cruz and then when we got there we couldn't find anywhere to park so then we waited another 45 mins in traffic waiting to get to this parking lot which ends up FULL...come on serisouly, we were alll so grumpy by this point we were ready to turn around and go home. But I was trying to keep everyone sain and I said why don't we just go to this other beach that 5 miles away, so we all agreed and went to this beach and it turned out there was no parking around that beach either..oh boy what a day seriously, luckly we found a parking lot that had a free shuttle to the beach and got on that and finally got to the beach oh around 3:45 when we left at noon! The kids had a great time playing in the sand and the very seaweedy water, and i tell you what it was a very memorable trip!

Here are some pictures from our first little adventures with Mark, I will post more on our trip later!

At the Golden gate bridge

Shaylee getting drunk on a tummy yummy!

In the car, he's happy now...but ask him 10 hrs after that

This was the first of MANY rest stops we stopped at..really this wasn't the best one, Shay wouldn't even go in there, it ended up being the toilet with the glove in it stop!