All they need is a hotel

For some reason I have been putting this post off and I guess it's because I had so many pictures. Anyway, Tyler had to go out of town for work a few weeks ago, to Newport Beach, so we tagged along. The kids really don't care where we go, they get so excited just to stay in a hotel, so they 're easy to please! Our first night there we went to the original BJ's and this pic below was taken somewhere along the beach near BJ's.

Since it was Monday night we decided to take them to see the Newport Beach Temple and have a little lesson about the temple for Family Night.

You sure can't tell in these pictures because it was so dark, but the grounds were beautiful, the most beautiful temple grounds I've ever seen. Sadly it was all locked up because it was MONDAY! So, we made plans to come back during the day before we left.

I think the temple is somewhere behind us!

Our first day at the hotel the kids wanted to swim, they always want to swim. I got in for a wee bit and decided it was too cold to bring Peyton in, and it was too cold for me as well. The water is rarely too cold for the boys though.

After swimming we picked up some sandwiches from Big Belly Deli (delicious!!!) and walked down to the beach. I was really bummed because they whole beach was fenced off and there were huge tractors moving sand down to the pier. I guess it's a 6 week project to help prevent the erosion or something like that. It was really noisy and everytime they drove by the air was full of sand, so needless to say, so were our eyes. I also had these GRAND plans to build a ginormously awesome sand castle with the kids too, bummer. They were god sports about it though and still had fun in the dry sand.

It was pretty challenging to dig a hole in dry sand too, it kept wanting to fill itself back up.

We made it back to the temple during daylight hours and got to walk around the grounds this time. Miss P fell asleep in Daddy's arms and I couldn't pass up the picture.

I'm sure it's not great that we saw this, but there were several rabbits hanging out on the temple grounds, it really added to the magical atmosphere of the temple and the kids thought it was pretty great that so many rabbits were there.

Tyler had been to Rainforest Cafe before and has wanted to take us and was finally able to. I wasn't too excited about it, not that I didn't want to go, I just didn't think it would be that big a deal, so I was very pleasantly surprised. It was really neat, I had wonderful build your own fajitas, and we had a great waiter too. A guy even came over and made the kids balloon animals!

You can't see it very well, but Benji's was a snake and he had loads of fun with it. He even went behind one of the benches at another table that was being bused and poked his snake abouve the back of the bench. I think he was trying to scare the busser or something. He's a funny kid.

Micah's was probably the coolest, a monkey climbing a banana tree. I just threw it away a few days ago, so his lasted the longest by far.

Tic tac toe while we wait for our food.

About every ten minutes or so the two elephants right by our table would start stamping and snorting and doing their thing while the lights flashed and it was like thunder and lightening. Peyton thought it was really neat. Ty got her to pet the little elephant, and while she was petting it it started to move and she really didn't like that! I got a cute video of it I'll try to post next time.

This walkway was high in the air connecting two parts of the South Coast Plaza Mall. Bridge of the Gardens is its' official name. The kids thought it was very cool too, and they got to ride tons of escalators which they love. I was disgusted by the mall though, to be honest. The upper levels were jam packed with high end stores, I mean really high end stores like Versace, Dolce and Gabbana, Cartiers, Coach. The list goes on. There was also a super fancy french restaurant too.

I experienced a first with Miss P, I got to sleep with her in the same bed for a few hours, it was heaven. Micah slept in our bed all the time as a baby and with each child that happened less and less until we made it to number four and it NEVER happened, so it was pretty nice, as long as it doesn't become a habit!

The boys shared a bed which worked well, I guess they were too tired to keep each other up long.

I was worried about what I would do our last day there because checkout was 11 am and Tyler didn't get off work until 4 pm. My Aunt and Uncle live in Garden Grove which was about 15 minutes away, so Ty suggested I call and see if we could go visit with them. Aunt Troy had sugar cookies made for them to decorate and she had Uncle Ron set up their wii, so they were well entertained. It wasn't a long visit, but it was great to see them. We even got to go to my cousin's Daughter's swim meet. It was fun to see them in more of an everyday setting than at Thanksgiving or Christmas or summer vacation. I love my family and I'm so glad we got to visit with them.

Some of our pretty cookies, Thank you Troy for making our visit so special.

This is my Aunt Troy, she is kind of like a Nana to my kids. Isn't she pretty?

Although there were some disappointments and I'd rather go out of town on vacation than tagging along for Ty's work, it was a good trip and I'm glad we went.