Hey, let's go on vacation... day 1 and 2

My parents took the whole family on a cruise. This, of course, means we don't get an inheritance. But we're all okay with that. The memories are priceless. Oh yes, I went there. Cheesy and proud.

We decided to go the weekend before with our circus and see the beach. And Disneyland. So we grabbed Papa Mike, had two neighbors pick us up, because our circus is too big for just one ride to the airport, and we hopped on a plane to Cal-i-forn-i-a.

The first day we just hung out at the hotel and let the kids swim. The first night would be the night that my waterproof camera would decide it didn't want to be waterproof anymore, and would fill up with water when Cas tried to take a picture in the hotel pool. I was not a happy camper.

So on the second day I had to take pictures with my phone. I called my parents and asked them to stop by our house and grab our spare camera for us and bring it with them to the cruise ship. So until then, I would have to get by with my phone.

Day 2 of our vacation we decided should be a beach day. It seems we never let the kids have enough beach time. Day 2 dawned over cast and rainy. The rain cleared up, the clouds never did. We hit the beach anyway. What part of this screams tourist? All of it. The beach we found had a cool rock wall reaching out in to the water. We climbed out on it, and got completely pounded by waves. Not so cool since I was in my clothes. But we laughed and had fun anyway.

My favorire picture sequence of the whole vacation happens right here in the next two pictures:

Was I right? Or was I right?

And then we climbed back to the beach where the kids swam, built in the sand, laughed, yelled, and went crazy. I sat on my towel and read my book and watched them. West and his dad talked nearby. And my heart smiled.

When the circus finally got cold enough, we walked up the road to a seafood restaurant and I watched Brynn and Tay link arms to walk. My heart smiled again.

It was at this restaurant that we scored generic fast track passes for Disneyland to use the next day. They were expiring and she wasn't going to be able to use them.

After lunch we drove over to check out the outside of the Queen Mary (we didn't want to fork over $30 a pop to see the inside). We saw a bunch of funky black crabs crawling around.

And we walked around the "classic Japanese car show", which was kind of funny. There were a lot of ghetto cars from the 80s there.

After that we found "Leisure World" where we almost left Papa Mike. It was a retirement home and I kid you not, while in that area we didn't see anyone under 70 years. Papa didn't quite fit in, but he's getting there. ;)

We went back to the hotel, cleaned up for dinner and went to the Cheesecake Factory where West ordered this:

We didn't realize it would be served so... raw. And we ordered cheesecakes that we took back to the room and had a cheesecake frenzy.

Time for bed kids. Tomorrow we go see The Mouse.