Oh I thought of a good many embarrassing titles for this post of my sister Nicole and her best friend Kellie, but Nicole knows where I live, so I decided against it.

Nicole and Kelly have known each other for 17 years (11 of it being close friends and 8 of it as cousin-in-laws.) They grew up here, met their boys, got married, started families… who would have thought Kelly and her hubby would relocate to sunny California?!

Nicole is such a great friend! She is presently throwing Kelly and her hubs a big going away party with pizzas the size of a hula hoop! She made the coolest necklaces for her and Kelly as a going away present. Good thing Cali is just a day trip away.

Did you know this was coming out? I see a “max” costume in my future to disguise any “wild things” that come my way… wouldn’t that make the BEST portrait for a little boy!?

If you can call it a vacation! After a lot of prep work on my part, an overnight drive with little sleep, the kids waking up in Kingman AZ at 3am!!!, rainy day at the beach, not so happy troopers at Disneyland, breaking down an hour after heading home, and accidentally missing our turn and subsequently driving to Vegas!… I was happy to come home! ha ha! But there were some good times.

The first day, even though it was so rainy, we walked around a Huntington Beach looking at woodys and other classic cars. The kids picked up shells and didn’t complain one bit about the weather.

Of course we walked and walked and walked around the “Happiest Place on Earth.” But we know all the tricks and ride every ride we want to and never wait longer than 20 minutes to do so. This was Miss E’s first trip as a little person (not a baby), it was super fun to watch all her reactions!

After our initial “planned” stay, we headed down to San Clemente to spend an afternoon at the beach…just relax and get ready for our drive home. We crashed at my aunt H’s house that night and got up early for our trip home. About an hour after we started out we broke down. By that time we were out of the L.A. area blessed to be only 10 minutes from my wonderful aunt Kathi and awesome cousins! (many prayers of thanks for that one!) And yes, we did end up heading north to Vegas instead of east to go home… I failed as a navigator that day… a bit too busy entertaining the kids… but we had a yummy lunch, oohed and awwed at what we did see and headed back to the appropriate route home.

After all that, I am looking forward to getting back to work!