California Trip

We went down to California at the end of May to attend Brad's sister, Shannon's wedding.  We decided to prolong our stay for more than just a weekend and visit ALL our families.  It was a blast!

 We managed to hit Oceanside Beach, where Brad actually got to surf, and sweet Gabriel got to feel the sand at the beach for the first time.  Amalie had been very young the few times she had been at the beach, so it was a new experience for her too.  Andre even tasted the sand for the first time.

We made it to Legoland, because my sweet bro in law and sis in law, hooked us up with passes.  We went with grandparents and my sis in law and darling nephew met us there.  Our little family ended up staying til the park closed and we had so much fun with the kids.  I think this was one of the first times I have actually ridden the bigger kid rides with the kiddos.  I love getting to experience such things with them. Gabriel SCREAMED the entire time on scary rides.  It was so funny!  (A high pitched girly scream if you can imagine) The last few hours, we were able to hop on any ride and get on in less than five min, so we had fun just running from ride to ride.

We got to spend time with all three families and see ALL of our siblings as well.  That was fantastic!  We miss our families so much, living so far away, so it was nice to see them, even though it never seems to be enough time!

The crowning event was Shannon's wedding to Steve.  That was so neat that we were able to come down and see how happy they are.  The wedding and reception were a lot of fun and we loved seeing Brad's family.  We partied til we were all partied out, and left the next day to start on our journey home.

 I have to say we were EXTREMELY blessed on the car rides.  Brad and I were both concerned that it could be a really awful car ride because Amalie gets motion sickness.  She doesn't throw up, but she is absolutely miserable, and we have to stop multiple times.  Andre was also a wild card, because he is so busy, he hardly stops moving, so we didn't know what he'd do when he discovered he couldn't get out for hours and hours.  We were prayerful and prepared as much as we could, and split the trip up as much as we could, and I have to say the trip, although there were some bumps, and near accidents, turned out surprisingly well.  
Andre slept most of the trip as we often traveled during his nap time and Gabe slept a lot of the trip as well.  Even sweet Amalie got her share of naps.  So grateful it went so beautifully and after a particularly bad run in when Google maps tried to re-route us because of traffic, which caused us an extra hour of driving only to get back on where we had gotten off and drive 45-60 minutes at a speed of less than 10 miles an hour to accomplish only 3-5 miles, we said another prayer and I felt a sweet wash of calm, and quickly forgot all about the hours of stress we had just endured.  It was awesome!