Sara's Birthday Adventure!

Sara turned the big 3-0 in May, so, of course we had to celebrate with a girls' day out adventure!  We went to San Diego and did...everything!  Well, not really, but we did visit lots of fun San Diego sites.  We started our morning by doing some service in the San Diego Temple!  

What a beautiful place!

Next, we headed to Old Town, where we visited the Mormon Battalion Visitors Center.  Sara hadn't been there since it had been renovated, so she got picked to help in the demonstration of what the Battalion members wore.

And we panned for gold:

Then off to Old Town we went!

Next we ate lunch at The Alamo restaurant and headed over to Cabrillo National Monument.

And then to Coronado Beach!

We stayed almost until sunset, but we were exhausted, so we grabbed a quick 

Jack in the Box dinner on the road and headed home.  It was a fun day!

San Diego Mission

Joey's in 4th grade and, you know what that means: a California Mission report.  It ended up being quite the outing and we all had a great time!  David, Melissa, and their boys went in their van and my parents, Nancy, Josh, Dylan, and I went together.  Once we got there, we took the place by storm...that's what happens when you travel with 6 very active wee men!

This lady was awesome!  She worked in the gift shop and, since the boys were so adorable, decided that she would give them a little tour/extra info.  The boys loved it and they loved playing in the little houses.

The rest of the time, we pretty much just looked around and had a fun time being together.  We looked through the museum a bit, but as I said, the main thing that made it fun was that we were together.  Here are some pictures of our adventure:

After we finished at the mission, we drove up to the Presidio site and looked at/played on the site of the old presidio.  It's actually an archaeological site and the hills you see in the pictures are the walls of the presidio, overgrown with grass.

By the time we were done here, we were all starving, so we finished off our day at Rubio's!  

It was a fun day for us all!

Jonathan's First Disneyland Visit!

On Wednesday, April 24th, I got to take my sweet two year old nephew to Disneyland for the first time!  I love taking my nephews on "Auntie Rach Adventures" and had been lamenting that I hadn't had the opportunity to take him on very many...and not really any on his own.  So, on the day I bought my Disneyland pass, I took him with me and it was such an awesome day!  It started off very differently than I had planned since we left about an hour later than planned and then were delayed another hour due to bad traffic.  Also, it was supposed to be nice weather, but as we got closer to Disneyland it got more and more cloudy and the sky grew darker and darker.  We even caught some sprinkles on the windshield...and Jonathan was wearing shorts and a t-shirt, dressed for a beautiful day at the park.  Luckily, I had brought jackets for the two of us that we could wear in case it got cool in the evening.  So, we wore our jackets all day and the bright orange blanket I always keep in my car came in extra handy!

Here's sweet Jonathan all bundled up:

and here's the precious face he made when he realized we were at Disneyland:

I honestly don't believe he could be any more adorable!

Before we went, he was so excited to see Mickey, so we went to Toon Town and it worked out that Mickey was actually in his house!  So we got in line and waited for about 35 minutes to meet Mickey.  As soon as we got to the front of the line, however, Jonathan decided that Mickey was terrifying and didn't want to be anywhere near him unless I was holding him.  I had expected that this could be the case, so we both took a picture with Mickey!

We went on Snow White, Small World, King Arthur's Carousel, the Little Mermaid, and visited Big Thunder Mountain Ranch.  Jonathan LOVED seeing the animals.  He had fun petting the goats and meeting Jesse from Toy Story.  

Isn't he adorable?

On Winnie the Pooh

I know it's blurry, but I love how it shows how excited he was!

In the evening, we met up with Scott, 2 of his adorable nieces, and his awesome mom for dinner and the parade.  It was a pretty cool parade, with all of the Disney princesses and, of course, Peter Pan, which Jonathan loved!

Scott and Jonathan

At the end of the night, Scott was kind enough to take a picture for us and, since Jonathan loves his buddy Scott, he attempted a smile for this picture, rather than the stoneface he'd been giving all day!

We attempted a Cars Land ride, but when we got there, Jonathan was fading fast and the line was long, so we called it a night.  We had such a fun day and I'm so happy that I got to take Jonathan on his very first Disneyland adventure!