California Theme Park Vacation

Juliet started off the month with a much anticipated gymnastics class with her friend Juni. 

Then we went out and picked up Eleanor's viola for strings class but first we had to check out all the other cool gear at the music store.

These guitars were stupid expensive, I think sports are cheaper than music.

It's heartwarming to know that singing into fans is still a beloved childhood pastime.

Patrick went to Linn Valley for the Labor Day fishing derby and rocked it!

He ended up winning for his age division.

He was very very happy. It's been a blast having him go down for all these fishing derbies over the past few years.

Then we had a nice day on the water with friends.

Callie loves the lake but it absolutely exhausts her. We are at the point where we let her off her leash when we're all hanging around at our lake lot and she really enjoys her freedom. 

We had our traditional 'smores over at the Rutherfords.

You can't tell here but of course Bradley's marshmallow is burnt to a crisp.

Callie and Bear love each other so much.

Everyone but me and Eleanor spent the night. Patrick and Juliet were very proud of their mini fire pit they made themselves.

Nathan even made a little fire in it for them in the morning.

This is the face of a child who is having a good time at the lake.

And this is the face of a child who is having a good time at brunch with Mom!

We went to First Watch. Eleanor approved!

I like to say I've really been into organizing lately, just look at how well I organized this kitty!

Returning from the lake there were some very tired passengers in the car.

My parents finally taught me how to play Dominion and it was very fun but I lost because I was way too aggressive with the cards I chose. Bradley played after me in a game I wasn't involved with but apparently he opted for the exact same strategy as me and also lost. Turns out we're both way too excited about the option to attack other people in these types of games. 

Meanwhile the girls played in the basement. Juliet is overjoyed whenever Eleanor agrees to play with her and it is most likely to happen whenever we go to Grandma and Grandpa's house. We all really like our weekly dinners and hangout time with the grandparents.

My Aunt Diana sent me a couple of pictures of the band she used to be in when she was in her early 20's so I framed them and put them by the kids' keyboard as inspiration. Patrick was very impressed!

Nathan and Juliet fit in one last pool outing at the Lionsgate pool, just the two of them.

Juliet doesn't get a lot of one on one Daddy outings but it turns out she likes them quite a bit.

Too much fun! These are our two most enthusiastic swimmers.

Then they came home and the kids watched a show but Juliet thought it was rather scary so I kept her company on the stairs so she could watch it from a safe distance.

Eleanor had expressed interest in making some fancy brownies so I got her a kit and she and Juliet made it together.

It was indeed epic.

The egg chair has been getting some love as a reading spot.

 And as a hangout spot to do some art. It's very versatile.

Callie remains in love with all of our cats.

Me too. If I rest at all during the day I immediately have a kitty assistant.

Juliet had her second first day of school when we switched her to the Lord of Life preschool. We made it one day at the other school and I realized I had about an hour and a half free before I would have to go pick up Bradley. In addition to that, it's a lot of kids with special needs in the Hilltop class and she's not exactly patient with kids who can't keep up. Very few friend options in the Hilltop option. So we switched. She was a little unsure at first but then met the very fun girls in her new class and was all in after that. 

They also take lots of pictures, which I very much appreciate.

It was nice to see happy pictures of her on the playground!

Meanwhile, I joined my friend Annie for a walk with our dogs. Callie is a dear, she could tell that Bear was trying to push off his annoying leash that wraps around his face and she tried to help him.

Juliet had her first dance class. She was so proud!

She joins the medley of activities we have going on. Here is Patrick reacting after his team scored a basket. Or maybe they won this game? He was very excited.

And there have been some complaints about the number of Patrick activities that we go to versus the number of Eleanor's activities that have a full cheer squad. I mentioned that we don't stay for most of his practices and he just happens to have a lot of games, but I did take it to heart and we made sure the entire family plus grandparents came to Eleanor's next swim meet.

She did 100 back, 50 breast, and 25 free.

One spectator insisted on a lot of cuddles, which was okay by me.

Victory pancakes the next morning!

Nathan took Patrick out for tacos in the middle of his basketball tournament that afternoon. 

Meanwhile, I found a house to go view. Bradley didn't care about going and Nathan wasn't available so I took my mom and the two girls. I kept saying "don't get attached, don't get attached" as we walked around the rather fantastic house.

It has a pool. We got attached. Nathan and I went back later that evening to look at it again, put in an offer, and signed digital papers during church the next morning. We don't mess around!

At this point we owned a new house! This was FX Live, Bradley got to make sound effects for a little play.

Juliet and Eleanor were a team for a trivia question.

And our realtor dropped off congratulatory cookies for us!

We ate them by the pool at our friends the Neils house. We were very excited.

Their pool is very nice and seeing our kids happily swimming certainly made me feel good about our rather sudden decision to buy a house. To be fair, I had been looking at houses for six months. But we really jumped on the house we bought very quickly. And I had been hoping to move in the spring, not the fall. It was all very fast!

Juliet helped the boys out when we went to the dermatologist to clear up a bit of molluscum on the boys. This was much less traumatizing than Juliet's experience but it was also much more active. The boys were very hyped up.

Juliet then pretended to give Callie shots as we waited for kids after school. Callie is so kind.

We rather fear Juliet sometimes.

Bradley has been scoring extra time with his friend Xavier by inviting himself over after their little robotics classes they have been doing with my mom. However, that has come to an end because Xavier had a chance to join the actual official middle school team and Bradley didn't want to do anything that seemed like extra work. Oh well!

Poor Callie is often absolutely exhausted in the evenings now. It's tough work to keep up with the kids.

They have just a bit of love and attention for her.

Layla still likes it when Nathan works from home but there's the gross dog issue. One of my favorite things is when she's so happy and loving Nathan and then turning to hiss and be angry at the dog. It's some extremes.

Patrick has been having lots of quality time with neighborhood friends right before we're going to move. 

And I took him out for a well earned blizzard after he worked hard at a basketball practice. Eleanor is always so good at talking me into these things, I'm trying to make sure they happen for the other kids as well. Patrick was very pleased with his hot cocoa blizzard.

Proving that Patrick was not too big to be picked up by Grandpa.

Bradley had a couple of friends over for nice calm fun in our backyard before they had an evening out at Main Event with his church youth group. Abe is really really nice.

Fortunately they had a blast at the event.

Nathan got to go out to a cool virtual reality game activity with a neighbor friend.

And Eleanor is actively stealing my cat and is so proud of herself.

Bradley has been busy inventing his own board game.

Eleanor brought her viola home and was showing us how to play it and Callie became very excited and worried at the new thing so decided she needed to smooch Eleanor a bunch to make sure she was okay.

Eleanor had a Girl Scout event at a jewelry store and her leader got this amazing picture of her.

Smooches from my little boy. Aggressive smooches.

Juliet dressed up fancy for a trip to the library.

I love getting to dress her up.

The kids also got really into building forts right before we got ready to move.

The boys were dressed basically identically so we said the only way to tell them apart was Bradley's glasses. They thought this was hilarious.

Poor tired Callie.

Juliet has fancy friends whose mothers buy them cake pops and get her one while they're at it.

Fancy work dinner for Nathan.

Dance!

It's very obvious Patrick is a cool dude.

Here's Patrick holding $16,000 in cash for the sale of the RV. Yes, it was time for the RV to go. We can still go down to the lake but it's rare that we spend the night so it didn't make sense to keep it for how often we got to use it. It was well loved though, especially when we first got it and went every weekend during covid summer and fall.

It's been a Juliet and Patrick love fest lately.

In addition to buying a house, we had a big trip planned in September. California theme parks! Why split up all the busy things when we can do them all at once??

There was much joy. It was a fantastic trip.

We went all in on some of the things and Eleanor and I are wearing matching Mickey Mouse earrings here.

My parents went with us so we rented a ginormous car for the trip. It had to fit eight people plus luggage!

An obligatory stop at In-N-Out after our flight landed.

DISNEYLAND! We hit the ground running on this trip. 

We started out at Star Tours, which terrified Juliet, but then we did a lot of little kid rides and fed everyone ridiculous amounts of yummy treats so there was very little suffering.

Our first family picture. Note the coordinating shirts! I ordered these in advance and was very proud of myself. Each person got to pick a favorite character and they all have sunglasses that have a reflection of the Disney castle in them. Adorable. We got a lot of compliments.

We did not bring a stroller for Juliet which was really nice, one less thing to keep track of. And she's light enough that it worked pretty well having adults trade off duties carrying her throughout the day.

Treat stop #1. There was an app with a mobile ordering option and it turned out that was very key for success. Everything is a competition at Disney, including being able to get food. Bradley asked "When are we going to be spoiled rotten?" because I had promised them such things and he was very satisfied when I said, "Now" and gave them a cookie based lunch.

But oh man, the food. It was very good.

Cute Daddy and cute Juliet.

The Star Wars area was really cool, even though my crew aren't huge Star Wars fans. It was really interesting seeing which characters the kids chose for their shirts. Bradley chose the Mandalorian, which I wouldn't have expected. Nathan was baby Yoda so of course they had to take a picture together in front of the Millennium Falcon.

Juliet met Ray and had a nice chat even though she had no idea who the character was.

My parents with the kids

Me and Nathan with the crew.

It was really helpful having my parents there, even though my dad kept exclaiming the entire day about how he couldn't believe how much the park had changed in the 30 years since he had last visited it. Some of the scary rides Juliet would skip and she would hang out with my mom while the rest of us went on a thrilling adventure. We learned after Star Tours to ignore height requirements and just have Juliet opt out if it seemed like it might feel a bit scary for her.

The pinnacle of Patrick's day - getting a Pluto hat. He wore this for the rest of the vacation. Again, I didn't realize he would be a Pluto fan going into this trip. But apparently he loves him!

Then we just had fashion fun in the Mad Hatter shop.

I didn't get this and I sort of think that was a mistake now. I didn't realize how much I would enjoy being a Disney villain. Eleanor said some cruel things when I threatened to pick the Maleficent shirt originally, like "I totally see that" and "That tracks" so then of course I HAD to pick it. It was also great because I was themed with Juliet and could threaten her with black magic whenever she was naughty. That's just good parenting.

Cool dudes together.

One time when Juliet went off with Grandma I got a phone call from Grandma telling me Juliet was begging for a $37 Ariel bubble wand. I told her money had no meaning anymore and to get it for the little girl. People near me in line overheard the conversation and laughed and agreed with me. Ah Disney. Juliet was beyond thrilled.

So much joy over her new wand.

At least one older child couldn't believe that she had gotten to get such an expensive souvenir. However, we had given each of the kids an allotment of spending money for the trip so Juliet basically used hers up in one go.

Girls together!

This photo adequately sums up what it was like for my parents throughout the day with this crew. Juliet got pretty aggressive about attacking people with her bubble wand.

Aw, a picture of Beauty and the Beast.

A better picture of our matching earrings. This was during the really hot part of the day where we all kind of melted and went for a long train ride around the perimeter of the park so everyone could have a bit of a rest. We were so lucky though, it only got up to the low 80's and if we had come on our trip a week later we would have been there during a true heat wave.

Patrick in his Pluto shirt and hat is just kind of the best.

The whole crew.

If Juliet looks like she's being naughty and pushing Grandpa's hat down on purpose in this picture it's because that's exactly what's going on.

He lost his hat on Autotopia. He actually lost a couple items on this trip and kept having to run back and retrieve them. Nothing got lost permanently at least!

Me and my wild driver.

Juliet LOVED Autotopia, she actually wasn't as excited about a lot of the Fantasyland rides and preferred this and Thunder Mountain Railroad.

Patrick bringing in the smolder.

Icee lemonades with the Matterhorn in the background.

Bubble attack

These two get along way too well.

We got Oreo covered churros for the kids. They had very dark smiles for a while!

And in perhaps the most exciting part of the day, we saw Gaston walking by and he got to meet Beauty and the Beast! My poor dad had actually just walked off to get a late lunch so I chased him down and said, "Hurry up, we found Gaston!" He forgot why that might matter and gamely followed me back over to Sleeping Beauty's castle, where we had last seen Gaston. He had since walked off but I was sure he couldn't have gone far so I chased him down and dragged my parents along and we got this amazing moment.

Then they took some adorable pictures together.

Patrick also got some character love during the parade. Donald came over and gently smacked his hat down and then Pluto came by and gave him a fist bump. 

We loved the parade, it was so nice that my parents saved us front row seats. There was a little boy by Juliet who tapped me on the arm at one point and told me that my daughter was being mean. I looked at her and she looked like a little angel so I told her "Be nice!" and left it at that. Later the boy accidentally bumped into her and she turned and bared her teeth at him and growled a little and then turned back to cutely watch the parade with a happy expression on her face. I pretended like I hadn't seen anything. This is why I dress her up cute.

Bradley even helped with some Juliet carrying duties over the course of the day.

Because we got the fancy lightning passes we also got free professional pictures while we were at the park. The ones in front of the castle turned out so great!

Eleanor got many good child points for not hitting Bradley during photos.

Special effects!

I insisted that Mom and Dad get some solo pics of the two of them as well.

It was pretty cute!

We had turkey legs for dinner. Dinner of champions!

And I let the children go off with grandparents unsupervised and the pleas for cotton candy were instantly met with result the kids had hoped for.

I got to borrow Patrick's hat for a bit. As if I couldn't get any cooler.

We played around towards the end of the day. It was actually the best after we had done all the rides we really cared about and could just around and look at things.

The Sword in the Stone!

Eleanor was the one who had requested we go check this out.

After Pirates of the Caribbean. 

Cute kids at the ice cream shop.

We had a lot of fancy ice cream on this trip.

Eleanor said she was tired at the end of the day so I gave her a piggy back ride to the car.

And then, through a fortuitous turn of events, we found out that we couldn't get tickets to California Adventure for the next day because they were already sold out so we had to adjust our plans and go to Legoland instead. Nathan got to cancel a hotel reservation, I had to inform my parents that we were changing up everything on them and would go to California Adventure after they had gone home, but it all worked out and we're pretty sure it was all for the best.

Because we were pretty tired after Disneyland. I think I walked around 14,000 steps and I'm pretty active but my legs were still sore. Legoland was so easy and we basically had a rest day while we were there.

Kids with grandparents outside of the park!

All the rides were cute and had little to no wait. There wasn't a competition to get food or go to the bathroom, like at Disney. Does this even count as a theme park day? Way too easy!

Driving school was a popular activity. Juliet got to do the little one for preschoolers.

And the older kids got to do the big one.

These kids love legos so much, it was a great day.

Cute horse ride

We signed up for the kids making their own mini figures, which was a hit for all involved.

And then we went to a room where the kids got to play around and build some Lego creations.

We watched a few Lego mini movies at a theater where the kids all laughed at me when I freaked out about every time they would spray us with water as part of the experience. And then we left when they shut the park down at 5PM.

We decided to skip the traffic back up to LA and eat dinner in Carlsbad.

I love looking at Yelp reviews to find good options for local foods. Nathan found this lovely Mexican restaurant for dinner.

And then we went across the street to a strawberry themed dessert place that had rave reviews.

We brought some weirdos with us though. Please note Eleanor in the background as well.

It was very very good.

The next day was a very big day for us, why stop going to theme parks after you've done just two? Universal Studios day!

We started with a quick jaunt to Harry Potter world. There were two rides we went on and we ran in and ran out.

Then we went to Super Nintendo World. Which was the impetus for this entire trip. I had big plans for us to go to Japan and go to Universal Studios there which is the only other place that has Super Nintendo World, but our kids were such disasters about anything approaching culture while we were on our trip to Santa Cruz this year so I decided our level of culture might be theme parks in the US. I was correct!

It was so amazing. The trip was 100% worth it. The kids keep talking about Super Nintendo World and how much they loved it. Please note Bradley's Yoshi hat, we got that even before we entered the Nintendo area of the park.

It was amazing. We got wrist bands and got to push buttons everywhere.

We had mini games we got to complete.

And even the main ride that had an hour wait was a blast - the line moved quickly and there was stuff like this to see the entire time we walked through.

The star appeared in the photo when I took a picture of Bradley in front of it. 

The ride was called Bowser's Challenge and it was a virtual reality Mario Kart ride where you tried to beat Bowser and his gang. It also synced up to our wrist bands. It was incredible. Incidentally, I insisted that Nathan and I get wrist bands along with the kids because how fun, right? Turns out they were $40 each and I probably wouldn't have done that if I had known it would be an extra $80 for us to join in on the fun. But it was great that we did, I had so much more fun getting to be in on everything and Eleanor and Nathan were duking it out for top score the entire time we were there.

We really love Mario so all of this was so exciting. We each picked different characters for our wrist bands. Eleanor was Princess Daisy, Juliet was Princess Peach, Patrick was Toad, Bradley was Yoshi, I was Mario, and Nathan was Luigi. That's all the characters they had available, pretty fun that we got to get the complete set!

The little hats we got to wear to go on the ride. The virtual reality glasses clipped in. It was really good Juliet was 41" for this trip, so many things had a height requirement of 40", including this ride. She got measured a lot at all the theme parks.

Me and my kart buddy.

It was really fun switching around which adult rode with which kid for rides. We all just shuffled around with different buddies throughout the day.

Juliet talked us into another souvenir when she got a Peach stuffed toy. To be fair, she was very into Peach and it has been well loved at home.

Bradley ready to start the trickiest of the mini games.

We took videos of each of us at this one.

I was really nervous that I wasn't going to be able to do this one right, I saw a lot of people fail. So I was rather thrilled when I got it on the first try!

Here's another mini game. Everyone made it through this one.

At the end, when we had all finished enough of the mini games to be able to battle Baby Bowser. That was another really cool virtual reality experience. We were put in a giant room and you had to jump and move your arms around to shoot at stuff like it was a live action Mario game.

The view from the top of a nearby tower. Super Nintendo World was so great, we spent three hours in there and the time flew by.

Punching a block at the end. I think a good deal of our enjoyment came from not having bored children and not having to tell them to stop touching things. You could touch everything and you were supposed to hit things and collect secret items. Amazing!

And there were a ton of people in there but that didn't seem to make us have to wait too long for anything and we still got to do all the things we wanted to do.

I told Princess Peach to pose in front of her castle. Juliet is always happy to oblige with a good pose.

Then we finally checked out some other parts of Universal. My parents were happy to get to sit in a playground with Juliet while the rest of us went on a Jurassic Park ride.

I made a big deal about getting wet on this dumb ride and being terrified of the big drop but I did agree to go on it again when Eleanor and Bradley begged for a second ride. Patrick joined Juliet and grandparents in the cool dinosaur themed playground.

We ended the day going on a Minions themed ride and I had us stop by a delicious self serve frozen yogurt place I had heard of on the way back through Universal Village. Everyone was pretty tired before this but it perked us all up. Especially Bradley who was appalled that Universal Studios became a fright park for Halloween in the evening.

The boys shared a bed on this trip and were quite cozy at times.

Saturday was a culture day because I sure as heck wasn't going to go to a theme park on the weekend. We went to Mini Tokyo in Downtown LA because it saved us about $20,000 from having to go to real Japan and we still got all the things we wanted out of a Japan experience.

We got delicious baked goods.

We got to see some pretty sights.

And we got in some epic shopping.

The genius owner of this shop kept walking over and handing my children little handfuls of tiny Pokemon and each time I would run around the shop again and find more items we wanted to buy. We had a fabulous time.

We had a sushi lunch! It was some of the best sushi I've ever had.

And we sat outside the real restaurant and had a nice meal while our children snacked on all the candies we had gotten at the Japanese supermarket across the square. The staff was very nice about it.

Then we went to a museum across the street and the kids learned about Japanese Internment. This was a virtual reality app to view a man's virtual reconstruction of his grandpa's corner grocery shop before the war.

Honestly the morning was all I could have hoped for and more.

My mom had visited a local friend while we had our morning outing and joined us for Medieval Times in the afternoon.

I wasn't sure how the kids would like this after having been to Dolly Parton's Stampede in Branson. The arena seemed a lot smaller than I remembered and all the early competition was mostly just cute.

But then the knights started battling and it got intense and all the kids lost their minds. It didn't hurt that our knight ended up being the champion! 

Very tired kids after this.

Sunday was a chill beach day. My parents left for a flight home and I had time to play some games with the kids.

And we ended up going to Newport Beach. We are very good beach people! It was a cold day according to the locals so it wasn't terribly overcrowded.

We rented a giant beach bike, which was a blast.

I mean, how cool is this thing? Technically we were supposed to drive on the streets but that was lame, couldn't even see the beach, so we just drove slowly on the sidewalk along the beach. Technically illegal, but we tried to be very courteous and mostly people just seemed really happy to see us, especially whenever Juliet yelled hello at them.

Obligatory beach ice cream.

And of course everyone ended up in the water. Even though it was in the 60's it was sunny and not windy so it felt okay.

Our family does so well at the beach. Everyone loves it. I'm so glad Nathan insisted on a beach day as part of this trip.

Bradley and Eleanor played in the water together.

And Juliet helped Patrick with his made by hand sand castle.

I got Nathan a fancy beverage as part of his lunch. It's Happy Dad Hard Seltzer.

Lunch crew.

I love her.

Eleanor and Nathan ended up playing in the water a bunch after all the other kids gave up on being cold.

We spent so much time there. Maybe 5 hours? It was a relaxing and beautiful day.

But also very tiring it seems.

And for our final day we went to California Adventure. Juliet made lots of friends as we were waiting to get in by showing off her Ariel bubble wand. Incidentally, this was the only time she actually wanted to hold it or use it for the entire day and the rest of the time we all took turns carrying it for her.

We decided to do an easy version of California Adventure and skipped the two hour wait for the Cars virtual reality ride and instead sent the big kids to the Guardians of the Galaxy ride while Juliet and I had no line for this Cars musical ride.

So much terror! This was Bradley's favorite ride of the day. 

They revamped the Tower of Terror to make it this ride and I was very proud of how I managed our lightning passes for the day because I saved the ones for this ride so they could go on it again later with no wait and before it closed at 2PM to switch over to some Halloween version of the ride. Disney activities are very complicated, I can see why people take literal classes to prep for these trips. Insane. But I managed it pretty well on the fly.

Juliet and Nathan at the pier, near the Ariel ride. She rode the Ariel ride four times over the course of the day. She said she liked California Adventure more than Disneyland, which to me just shows how much it matters to have the theme right for the activities you want to do.

The kids had a nice time on the Incredicoaster with Nathan! Juliet was too small. Which was okay, we had a very mellow version of what we wanted to do on this day because everyone was definitely pretty tired at the end of the vacation.

We got fancy cookies and a nice man took a group photo of us. Note that we wore our Disney shirts again. It was much more of a thing for people to dress up in Disney gear at Disneyland, California Adventure had a bit of it but not nearly the same level.

Me looking evil with my little Aurora nemesis.

Girl photo!

Bradley was really excited about Avengers, especially when it was time to go back to the Guardians of the Galaxy ride.

They had a different experience on the second ride. It turns out there are six different story lines you can get when you go on it! So neat! 

Juliet back at her beloved Ariel ride.

We got to watch a musical Donald Duck and Mickey show with 3D glasses.

Juliet begged hard for the $37 headband but she already had enough souvenirs and I remained firm against this one. Please note Eleanor's similar face in the mirror reflection.

We found this and made Eleanor take a picture of us.

Patrick found Daisy Duck and said hi!

Yet more fancy ice cream. Were we supposed to suffer???

A group picture on a ride that shut down right before we were supposed to go. Whoopsie.

We rode in the giant ferris wheel. It had probably our longest wait time of any of the rides, which is pretty funny.

Checking out more merch. I had no idea Patrick loved Pluto so much.

Eleanor looking traumatized by her villain of choice.

We went to a redwood forest play area where you could legitimately lose your children. My favorite part was how we went there because the kids were tired of walking and then they ran around the entire time.

We managed to find everyone and get them out for a group photo!

Scary Juliet at the final ride of the day, a water ride she was technically tall enough for but we knew she wouldn't like going on. I bravely volunteered to skip the ride and keep Juliet company.

I was so proud to get a picture of everyone as they came down the big drop.

And the only other pictures we cared about before leaving for the day was getting a photo with The Headless Horseman statue.

So scary! We love this cartoon, it was nice to have something the kids actually cared about.

We left the park at about 4:30 because we had done enough rides and were done. We have fun in Downtown Disney, had a yummy dinner and hung out by fountains.

Nathan with the big kids while I took Juliet to the bathroom.

It was an amazing vacation and you know it's good when you get home and the kids can't stop talking about it. I swore we would never do Disney theme parks but that turned out really well for us and I think we timed all of this just right. I don't think I would change anything for the entire trip - maybe less ice cream for Juliet, turns out it gives her an owie tummy when it's half her diet. But we all have so many great memories and I love looking through all the pictures! Couldn't have turned out any better!