Southern California

     The day after Christmas we loaded up the car and headed off to sunny southern California.  I was excited to see three of my four siblings and meet my nephew Chase for the first time.  My sister was kind enough to host all of us and sleep with three of her four kids in her room.  We got in somewhat late on the 26th and just hung out and got settled in.
     Thursday we headed out to the harbor in Ventura.  It was chilly but Shad had a great time playing in the sand on the playground on the beach.  It was nice to be near the ocean and made me miss the Oregon coast.  We wandered around for a while and saw several star fish clinging to the pier.  While we were standing there a fisherman accidentally caught one on his line.  He let the kids touch it before having my nephew throw it back in.  They all thought that was pretty cool.
      We then rented pedal carts.   That turned out to be hilarious.  My siblings and I thought it would be fun to all go in one, so it was Brandi and Chase, Dustin, Aubrey, myself and Bailey.  We knew we were off to a rough start when we were laughing too hard to pedal from the get go.  Aubrey was steering. . . not sure how that happened.  While I can admit it is better than me, it isn't by much.  It took a while for me to realize my steering wheel moved with hers but I didn't actually  have any control.  Trying to hold a baby, pedal and hold onto a steering wheel that moves is a little tricky.  We finally got going and were doing pretty well when one of my pedals fell off.  Yeah, that's right.  Apparently spin class is doing some good, I broke that pedal clean off.  Dustin jimmy-rigged it back on and we tried to catch up to Ben, Dan, Landon, Ashton, Melise and Shad.  We raced around for a while and it was a circus.  My pedal would not stay on.  We finally went and traded our cart in for a different one.
      When we finally caught back up with the guys I was horrified to see shad balancing on the chain guard as they were racing down the side walk.  Good thing that kid has amazing balance.  His dad could not figure out what I was stressing about.  We had a really good time and laughed a lot.  My siblings and I haven't done enough of that together.  We really missed Ryan though.  Although we did admit trying to haul his muscles around might have killed us.  We then headed back and had pizza for dinner.  Since Dustin's birthday was coming up we did a little celebration for him.  Dan and I decided to head down to San Diego that night to beat traffic and have the whole next day at Sea World.  It turned out to be a really late night after our hotel couldn't acommodate our reservation and sent us to a different location.  It went smoothly but we didn't get to bed until midnight.  Coming up, Sea World!