Monterey Bay June 2012

 We went to Monterey Bay for our first family vacation with just our family!  We spent two days at the aquarium.  The kids LOVED it!  One of their favorite parts were the shows.  They only had two different shows and we watch them at least 4 times!  (The next day the actors switched characters and Jansen noticed everything!  He wondered where the turtle was, and why the flamingo was wearing the turtles clothes etc.) After every show he wanted to go talk to the animals and they just loved him! 

 They had a hands on section where you could touch and hold lots of sea animals, no pics though.

 Tide pools

Jansen really came to life when we saw the penguins.  He got a paper and waved it around and the penguin followed his paper everywhere. It was so cute.  He did that for almost an hour, and cried and cried when we made him leave...

The Jellyfish exhibit was AWESOME!   

Reesa took over 100 photo of it for me!  I don't know if she liked the exhibit, or liked taking pictures more.  Here are just a few she snapped...

 We went to Bubba Gump's for lunch, our kids did not like sea food.

 Sunday we went to church and tried out Mitchell's wheelchair.  We were too nervous to use it in our own ward so we were anxious to give it a whirl.  It was awesome!  After this trip we have used it EVERYWHERE, and don't feel weird about it at all!

 After church we hiked to see hundreds of sea lions, and found lots of crabs, and tried out Mitchell's new backpack.

Mitchell's back pack was so awesome, Jake was nice enough to let all the kids take a turn in it around our hotel.  

 The last day we rented this bike and road along the coast.  Jake had Mitchell in a tummy pack so I got to drive, and it was SCARY!  I couldn't see very well with the kids in front of me, lots of up and down hills, but we still had fun.  Not to mention look how beautiful!!!

 We were only gone 4 days and 5 nights, but with all of us in one hotel room sleeping was hard... Jake and I didn't sleep, we just took turns calming Mitchell down.  Jansen and Reesa were champs and slept through Mitchell every night!  That was awesome.  Also Jake got up every morning and went running, while I feed Mitchell, then he'd come back and I'd go for a run then we'd all head down to breakfast at the hotel together.  They had amazing running trails, and the humid weather was perfect for running.  It reminded me of running in London.  So over all it was the perfect length vacation for our family!  We can do anything for a few nights, but we were ecstatic to come home and let Mitchell sleep soundly in his own bed!!!