California Christmas

I am just warning that this post has a ton of pictures.
With Parker coming home from his mission and the whole family being together for the first time in years my parents decided to take a trip for Christmas......so we all went to California.

We spent the first day at Sea World and had so much fun there. They have amazing shows with the animals there! It was so fun to go at Christmas time because the Killer Whale show was set to live Christmas music and amazing lights! It was so neat.

"Dancing" with the trainer

They are so beautiful when they jump

"Waving" Good-bye to the audience

Sea Lion show - so much personality!

Killer Whale Christmas show

That night for dinner we went to a very authentic restaurant in Old Town. The food was so yummy! A man was walking around the restaurant making balloon animals for people. He made 4 of them for my cousins. They loved their balloons so much!

Cowboy on a horse for our little cowboy! Look at the detail on that thing!

He wanted a monkey....but even better he had a banana for dinner!

A race car for the one who loves motors!

Lil Miss lovin' on her pink poodle. She loved playing with this even the following day when it was starting to come untwisted

The next day was the San Diego Zoo. It was neat. There are so many really awesome animals. We took a bus tour through the zoo that afternoon and the kids really seemed to enjoy that. Here is Erick with the bear statue that he loved.

 

That night for dinner we drove to the beach. We got there just as the sun was going down. Erick has never seen the ocean before so it was a very awesome experience for him. He just loved it. It is so beautiful at night!

We ate dinner at Joe's Crab Shack right there on the beach. Erick was so excited and it was super yummy food.

The next day we went to Universal Studios. It was really neat to be able to see how they make movies and all of the special effects that they have. Definitely a huge process.

Fast and the Furious cars doing a show. Super neat how they move the cars!

You can buy a life-sized Iron Man - - - - for $7,000!

Erick and I in front of the park

The following three days were spent at Disneyland and California Adventure. Erick has never been to Disneyland so we spent most of our time there. It was so much fun and they have everything decorated so cool with the Christmas holiday.

Toontown!!!

The lights on "It's a Small World". They lit it up in a fun show every hour

The big Christmas tree on Main Street in Disneyland. It was so beautiful when they lit it up every night. Complete with "snow" (bubbles)

We ended the trip with spending Christmas day in St. George with my grandparents. What a wonderful end to a wonderful trip. I love spending time with them. They are such special people!

It was a very nice trip and we all had a lot of fun - - Erick and I were both sick for part of the trip so that was not as fun, but it allowed us to slow down a little bit and enjoy everything!