the husband and i are from california. i think you know that. since moving here to the midwest, we’ve not gone “home”. and even before that we had the deployment and other things that got in the way from our visiting. so we made the trek, BY CAR, this summer. we drove all 30 hours straight through. he took the first overnight shift, i took the all day shift, and then he took the late night shift till the early morning. we left late thursday (10pm ish central time) and got to san diego saturday morning (1 am ish pacific time)

we had to stop for the kids and us to walk around a little and have breakfast lunch and dinner and bathroom breaks. BUT we did excellent on time non the less! during the week we spent most of our time at the beach/pool. my kids love water.

after 15 and a half years of marriage we are still feeling super blessed and lucky that we made that commitment to each other. it was pretty special going back together to where we got hitched and to show our kids that this is where mom totally tricked dad that she wasn’t really that crazy before he knew any better and got married for time and all eternity.

we did a total of 4,000 + miles round trip throwing in disneyland in-between seeing all my family and all of his family. 

this was the kid’s first time at disneyland they enjoyed it very much…i may have made the mistake of starting off with space mountain as our first ride of the day. the two younger ones were a little on the frazzled side. oops lessons learned. they eased into the swing of things after a couple more slower rides. hands down everyones favorite ride was the Matterhorn. with splash mountain a close second. (minus the girl she didn’t go on matterhorn, she liked splash mountain the best)

all in all the girl got mickey ears, the boys ate junk, mom and dad fulfilled their duty of getting them to disneyland.

 while i was in los angeles i was able to go back to close to where i grew up (and very close to where i went to elementary school and art school) to the uber cute fabric shop called sew modern.

 i was able to teach the kaleidoscope quilt class. and i had a blast getting to know all the wonderful women in that store. what a wonderful place to be. if you are in the area check it out, it’s right off the 405 freeway.

we ended up not going straight through back to iowa. we went to utah for a total of seriously less than 24 hours but we did make sure we got to see his family, and of course get cafe rio.

and i’m pretty sure the only thing that tastes better than cafe rio, is cafe rio after you haven’t had it for so long. iowa you need a cafe rio. just sayin. oh and you need to learn that your version of “mexican food” is totally wrong okay fine…different from the costal mexican food. we did make sure we had what jake and i call “real mexican” food. and of course seafood. (just me everyone else could care less about the seafood)

but i must also mention that during our time we ended up going to the san diego zoo.

and of course it wouldn’t be a V and Co. vacation with out some sort of traumatizing experience.

all went well till we got to the chimps. 

would you like to hear a story? 

it was a pretty nice day we had taken the bus around the whole zoo right off the bat because well, why not, and this way we could see the “hot spots” we wanted to hit up. my kids all have their special animals they obsess about but because they mainly spent their impressionable years by the monterey aquarium, we were out of luck on the REALLY obsessed over animals, like penguins, dolphins, sharks, and otters. but the two younger ones were happy with the second tier of loved animals like turtles, bunnies, and bears. aaaaaand monkeys. the monkeys were cute i must admit. the way they look at you like grumpy old men and then they scratch their bum, or pick their nose and eat it? that’s like prepubescent and teen humor all rolled into one. add the cool factor that they can totally swing around and dangle from one branch to another = awesome. so my kids were totally loving the monkeys. the husband was a little more like “oh look another monkey, this one slightly larger by say a couple of pounds, and with white hair sticking out from his ears. can please move onto the panda bear i heard there’s a baby.”

wikipedia stock picture

okay so perhaps the husband was a little right. there were a lot of monkeys, and orangutans, and different kinds of apes, and then there were the chimps.

when we got to the chimps my kids were finally thinking “okay we can go see other kinds of animals now.” so we checked them out for a little bit they were cute and funny. most of them were just like “what are you looking at” but two where “playing around.”

i started laughing cause the two reminded of me and jake when he pokes at me to try to get my ticklish spots. and me swatting his hands away.

seriously the boy chimp was like “i’m going to get your ticklish spot.” and the girl one was like “seriously stop, im trying to not be tickled right now.”  i went to move and tell jake. i turned to him and  right when i do i hear our third noise maker say really loud “look they are tickle fighting!!!!”

now, keep in mind, i’m not looking at them any more but i am facing my family. slowly the faces of my family members and the people around them go from smiley or nonchalant faces to:

i immediately knew something was up just by the looks of everyone’s mouth’s starting to hang open like in mid thought of “what the hel……”

my 11 year old noisemaker speaks first “UH that’s not tickling.” the 13 year old looks at me and says “yeah that’s NOT tickling anymore.”

the 9 year old and 6 year old don’t believe them and are pretty sure they are still tickle fighting. people around us are snickering at our conversation. in the corner of my eye i see other parents are quickly moving and ushering their children away in crowds.

mind you this all happened in like 30 seconds or like a minute or something like that but it literally felt like i was in slow motion…

i turned around and sure enough the turn of events went from subtle advances of tickling to full on “brown chicken brown cow…” cue in porn music.

my mouth is gaping wide open.

my husband says ” well it looks like the one on top is winning.”

we quickly usher the kids away and the husband then finishes by saying

“tickling got us 4 kids.”

true story.

we’re glad to be home.

and well now i don’t have to have the talk about how babies are made.