Disneyland!

In April Michael and I were able to go to CA with my family. I was really excited to go with them since I had not seen them as much since I got married. They are all growing up so fast! John is graduating next week and he will go on a mission in a year! Davis just got his name put up in the hall of fame at Layton high school. No freshman has ever had his name put in the hall of fame. Davis is going to be amazing in the next few years at sports. He is planning on playing varsity next fall as a sophomore and I think he will go to state and have a chance at the state title in wrestling next year. He can bench press 235 pounds!! Dylan is 12. He just got the priesthood and is now in young Men's. That's seems so weird to me since I was in young women's only two years ago! Jake is a good young man who is so kind and helpful. Ellie is turning out to be a beautiful girl. She will have all the boys chasing after her. Natalie is so pretty as well. She is full of energy and always getting in to trouble with her little posse Michael and Gracie. Micheal has become a tease! The girls are always screaming because of something he did. He is really fun to hang out with. Gracie is just cute! Not long ago she got in between a dog and a cat and her faced was all torn up. They were afraid she was going to have to get plastic surgery because the scaring may have been really bad. Luckily she is fine and is healing well.

Anyway, we went to Disneyland with everyone but John. John had a class at school he could not miss if he wanted to graduated so he was not able to go. He did come with us to St. George though. We stopped there to have a short break from the driving. We went biking, played basketball and games. It was really fun. After church on Sunday we drove on to CA. We got to the hotel really late that night. Micheal, my dad and I went into the hotel to check in and found out somehow we had schedule the hotel for 2012 not 2011. We had to hurry and try to find a hotel to stay in that night since the hotel would not help us out. We found a nice Marriott down the street that was a suite so we could all stay together. Michael and I slept up in the loft. It had no walls on one side or a door so the whole time we stay there we could hear the kids whispering and playing below us. In the morning the kids would try to crawl up to the top of the stairs and peak their heads around the corner and throw things at us without getting caught. Since we had no door we could not  stop them. :)

We had a lot of fun at Disneyland. I found a really good deal on tickets from a guy on ebay. We picked up the tickets in some back alley. My dad and Michael were pretending the cops were after us and were running around the parking lot back to the car.

Every time my family goes to Disneyland we bring a cooler full of food since a hot dog is eight bucks in the park. This year my dad had a huge cooler, 15 water bottles, and two bags full of food. Michael was carrying two of the big bags. He was really worried he was going to get into trouble so he made my dad carry it through the security line. My dad got stopped. They had three people telling him he could not bring all the stuff in. We had to bring it in my dad told the people because "I have 11 mouths to feed". They said no. My dad asked for my jacket and told us to go through and he would meet us. About 10 minutes later my dad came through the security line with a wheelchair, the food hidden underneath.

Disneyland was really fun but very crowded. After a long tiresome but fun day we headed back to the hotel. The next morning my dad and Micheal went to work in L.A. and my mom and I took the kids to the beach. The water was really cold but after being in it for 10 minutes you didn't notice the cold. Davis, Dylan, Jake and I had fun dodging the waves together and body boarding. After the beach we went back to the hotel; and swam for a few hours. We had a really fun time together.

The next day we drove back to St. George and stayed there for 3 days. While we were there Jake found a turtle. All the kids thought it was really cool and kept asking if there could keep it. For those who don't know my parents have a cat, rabbit, dog and some horses. Jake told me mom said he could keep it if it stayed on the back porch and didn't go away. The turtle would slowly make his way off the porch and into the grass and then Jake would secretly bring it back to the door. The poor turtle would take about two hours to make it off the porch and then Jake would bring it back.

We also went to Snow canyon and played on the "pancake rocks" as Natalie calls them. It was fun but a little scary climbing on the high rocks with all those kids.

We had a great time together and made it back home safe/