California Trip: Part 3

I will attempt to sum up the rest of our trip in this post. 

 We went to the Santa Cruz beach boardwalk and enjoyed $1 food and rides! What a great deal. I highly recommend it (Mondays and Tuesdays all summer long). The kids had a blast. Kaylee is so fearless on the rides and the kids enjoyed the water despite it being sooooo cold.

 Sienna's sour dough

 sea lions

 Jaycie and Kaylee

Grammy and Sienna

Nolan and Kaylee enjoying chocolate ice cream! (and both looking like Disney ads =) (this is from another day but I had to share it)

We were lucky to be in town for the Alameda County Fair in Pleasanton. It is always enjoyable with great weather. I remember these girls getting their picture taken by these swings last year. My how they've grown!

 Jaycie, Kaylee, and Lia

 I love the hand holding =)

 I went off to find a place to nurse and came back to a dazzling little Kaylee girl. She was so proud of her sparkles!

 Here is some perspective on how huge the Clydesdale horses are. They are so majestic and beautiful. I was so glad to see them but sad that they had to be so couped up.

The kids participated in the cutest little play with costumes and all! They did a great job with their lines too!

 I had to take a picture of Nolan helping Kaylee take off her costume. What a sweetheart!!!

 They had the coolest petting zoo with interesting animals like deer, kangaroos, llamas, pigs, and the typical petting zoo animals like goats and such.

 These two little monkeys were so glad to get out of their strollers and play together. We got asked several times if they are twins =)

 Drawing time! This was taken just after Jaycie and Lia competed in a tractor race. They did great! The younger kids got to try it out after the race.

 One of my favorite parts of the trip was surprising Mel with a little living room make over. Nancy and I decided to rip out the carpet to reveal beautiful hard wood floors. We had a great time talking, sweating, and pulling out a zillion staples!

Before

After shoving the old carpet into the back of the truck. (no small feat)

 Kaylee and Sienna were kind enough to take extremely long naps while we worked and when Kaylee did wake up, she was very helpful. We treated ourselves to dinner at La Pinata and ice cream at Clancy's for our hard work =)

 The Reveal =) Mel was impressed!

 Beautiful!!!!

 When the guys got back from New York, we had a little birthday party for Joel. One of his gifts was getting to meet the Henderson twins. What a cutie! This is Ethan.

 Kaylee was obviously happy to be with Papa.

 Kaylee had to help Daddy open his gifts =)

 This was Joel's big gift from me (bluray player). He got several other items too. It was great that Joel could be with most of his immediate family and some extended family for his birthday.

Right before we left we had the privilege of attending a baby blessing for Ethan and Megan. Their dad did a great job administering the blessing. We felt how special these babies are and how hard their parents had to work to get them here. It will be fun watching their blessings being fulfilled.
I didn't get any pictures at the blessing so I'll just post one from earlier in the trip.

Doesn't Katie look great!? Hard to believe she just had twins. Also hard to believe how big Sienna is at 9 months old compared to her itty bitty cousins.

 

We left immediately after the twins' big event with delicious food from Hendo's mom. The ride home was perfect! The girls took a 4 hour nap, woke up for dinner, and then went back to sleep for the last 6 hours!

This was Kaylee having a little pre-snoozing chocolate =) She sang cute songs until she fell asleep.

I enjoyed getting to talk with my sweetheart all the way home.

We had a great trip reconnecting with family and will cherish these memories for a long time. We hope they will come visit us too so we can enjoy each other more often!