Last one...

Ok, promise this is the last post about California. How did a week go by without posting anything? Time is going by waaayyyy too fast for me. That is why I am obsessed with remembering details lately. So bear with me while I go back and recall certain details from our trip. There might be a lot. Actually I can guarentee this will be the longest post you have ever read in your entire life. Feel free to skip.

We stayed at the Marriot Bayview...or whatever it was called. It's by the newport back bay...beautiful. Dave would always run the trails around the back bay so we purposely chose that one so he could have a trail nearby. We swam only once or twice at the hotel. I loved when night time came cause we were exhausted from a full day and would just crash. Before bed we loved to hang out for a bit and read to the kids. The one of Dave, coop and reese on the bed is one of my favorites.





Sunday, after attending our old ward and feeling completely at home again, we went to fashion island with some our FAVORITE people in the world. Our old neighbors and dear friends, Paul, Larisa, Tino and Maya. Coop and Tino were best buds and hung out all the time when we lived there. We hung out almost every day. I miss them so much. Anyway, just like old times, we hit up fashion island to go see the fish pond and wander around. It was a weekly activity of ours.



there just happened to be a guy sitting by the pond...with a snake. Guess who thought it was so cool...

larisa and sweet maya


aaaaahhh....the carousel. Can't forget that carousel.


On Monday, after disneyland, we walked in our hotel room to find a box of one dozen sprinkles cupcakes. Words can't...no, seriously...words can't express the jollies I got at that moment. I remember angels flying around and a light glimmering down on them. It turns out my more-than-wonderful sister, Melissa, had a dozen cupcakes delivered to our hotel room for my birthday. All you need to know is that every cupcake was gone by the next day. And I believe I only shared a couple with Dave and Coop. Melissa, I love you. And thank you once again. If you haven't tried there vanilla coconut.......my word.
Oh, and disneyland was awesome. The highlight of the trip for a certain 3 year old blonde boy was seeing Mickey and Donald of course. Actually, the only thing he recalls when asked about the trip :) I hate taking pictures at disneyland.



The beach. What more to say...





Tuesday was fantastic. We got to see more of our favorite people. Kristin, Jared, Brecke and Cove. We miss them. I love love love Kristin. We have similar opinions on certain debates ;) I miss our kids playing together and living across the street. I miss our beach days. Anyway, they came down to play at the beach with us and the kids definitely played. Larisa joined us with her kids for a bit and a blast was had by all. After the beach we walked to B.J.s pizza. The greatest pizza in the world. Mmmm...I crave the buffulo chicken as I speak.






Look. Just look at that hair. She is three people. THREE!!!! I want just a handful for Reese.










I think Wednesday or Thursday we went down to Balbao Island to walk around. We used to love doing that. As we did in every neighborhood, we would pick out the street we would live on if we could choose, and the house.



For lunch that day I met up with another favorite friend. I worked with Wendy at the Scrapbook Oasis up until I had Cooper. That was my favorite job EVER. She managed the store and hired me. The job was awesome but when we worked together it was always a party. I love you Wendy. And she has the cutest family. She has 3 girls and her youngest is a boy, Tayden. So cute. And his hair....ooohhhhh so cute. We ate at Rubys on the balboa pier and then played at the park right on the sand. Oh, I miss it all. It's just awesome that I chose to take every picture on the same day so Cooper is wearing the exact same thing in every one.








Friday night some friends of ours planned a small bbq on a little beach in their neighborhood. It was a perfect night. I remember standing their when it was almost time to go just soaking everything in. I wanted to stand there forever. I stood there thinking "one day we'll be back here." We ate food and then toasted s'mores over the expensive neighborhood grill. Next door to the beach front was Nicholas Cage's previous home he had recently sold. That neighborhood is the one I would choose to live in if we could. I decided that night :) Beautiful homes full of character all close by eachother. I loved it. Anyway, our friends Tracy, Adam and Kaelin were there. I love them. We lived next door to eachother and share simliar interests in almost everything. She is so freakin cool. The only mom I know who has subs in the trunk of her car. She also surfs and loves Sublime. And for some reason, I love that about her.







My whole body hurts from the amount of time I have spent on this bloody post. You can probably understand now the love we have for this place and people who live there.

As promised I am posting more pictures from our trip. For my sake, of course. I am already forgetting the great feelings and memories from that time. That is why a picture is so amazing to me. Each one can simply bring me right back to that moment and all of a sudden I can remember everything.

These pictures are from Thursday night, I think. After eating at Wahoo's (one of our favorite places to eat), Tracy, Nicole and I took our kids and our cameras to the beach one night and snapped away. It was fun for us, but waaay more fun for the kids, as you can see. We had only a small window of time before the sun went down. I remember the weather being perfect. It was cloudy but not cold. The water wasn't freezing. The second we got to the sand, the kids ran into the water right away, naturally, and were drenched within 5 minutes. Cooper was wearing a bright orange sticker that the cash register at albertsons gave him. (Reese had a fever that day so we had to go pick up some pain reliever for her). After we were done, we washed the kids off at the showers and walked back to Nicole's house, who is lucky enough to live across the street from the beach.

I have the most fun when I am taking pictures of kids, but especially kids I know. So here is an overload of pictures from that night. You will get sick of seeing pictures from this trip. Just to warn you. There are more to come...hopefully throughout this week.