Family Vacation...

We went on a beautiful family vacation to Solvang, California this last week. We got home around 1:00 a.m. Friday. We missed Gregory, who stayed home to stay in school. He already learned the risk of missing out on a week of school at his progressive charter high school, so given the option, he decided to stay home instead. His decision actually really impressed us with his sense of responsibility!

Mom B has always wanted to go on vacation, and she had this opportunity to get a time-share in beautiful Danish town of Solvang, California, and she invited us to go with her. She tried inviting lots of different family, we were just the ones to be able to pull it off somehow. (We were kind of hoping to be able to see my Grandma before she passed away, but unfortunately, instead she died a week too soon for my family to even be able to go to her funeral too. We had already promised to go with Mom B, and we couldn't afford the extra time off to do both, so we pulled off the one we had already commited to.)

Anyway, it was spectacular. We did the whole site seeing thing, and were able to fold into it the "Preparing for Adolescence" trip to Disneyland for Nels & Samuel. (See this Focus on the Family website for an article explaining what we do.) We started that tradition back with G then K, so we had to keep it up somehow. We take the CD's of Dr. Dobson's discussion as a very effective and Christian way to discuss a huge variety of topics that can make the whole adolescense experience easier.
We spent time in beautiful downtown Solvang, did some homework, went to the "Swamp of Dreams" haunted house for Halloween, went to church in their ward, (where I got to go to RS!!) and visited the local Catholic Mission (during Mass). We went to two beaches, did some homework, swam lots in the condo pool & hot tub, went to a few museums; we even went through the amazing Yosemite Nat'l Forest on our way home, (my first time ever). Way too much driving, but beautiful and a great experience.

Enjoy the pictures!

If you have access to my facebook page, I have posted LOTS more pictures of our vacation, and of the funeral too, or try this link,

Now to unbury ourselves...