Spring Break

We had a really fun spring break this year because Jon and Jaime and their kids came to visit us!  We had a blast together.  

The day after they arrived, we drove to Monterey to go to the Aquarium.  It was a bit chaotic since it was pretty busy for a weekday and keeping an eye on 9 kids at a busy place like that is stressful.  We only temporarily lost children, luckily. :)  We all had fun there.  I could sit and stare at the jellyfish all day long.  It was so mesmerizing.  Here are the pictures...

Happy to be out of the car!

Amazing creatures:

Some fun exhibits:

After that, we headed to an airbnb that we rented close to the beach in La Selva.  Unfortunately, the weather didn't cooperate so well for the two nights we were there and it was rainy and kind of cold.  We did still have some fun at the beach the next day, though.

These are from Jaime's nicer camera:

Eli loves being photographed. :)

We had fun playing games and hanging out at the house, too:

I saw this beautiful sunset one evening:

Jon, Jaime, Joe and I stayed up way too late one night talking but it was so fun.  We love those hanging out with those guys.

The day we left, we split up.  Joe went back to work for a day, Jon and Jaime took the younger kids to see some of his mission areas, and I took the older kids to a field trip at NASA.  My friend Deborah Anderson from San Jose had emailed trying to get a group together so we signed up our kids.  It was really fun!  I think they all had a good time and learned a lot.

The whole group of kids:

They had some really fun stations. The favorite was this one where they got to spin around and try to throw koosh balls to each other.

The next day, we drove to Muir Woods and had fun hiking there.  The kids were grumpy about going but perked right up when we got there.

It was so beautiful!  Those redwoods are amazing.  We learned a lot of cool facts about them from the park ranger.  We drove across the Golden Gate bridge and through SF on the way home.  That night, we got to take Jon and Jaime on an adults-only date to one of our favorite restaurants, Banana Leaf.  That was fun, and delicious as always.

Our last day together was spent at the beach.  We opted for a closer beach so we went to Half Moon Bay.  Unfortunately, even though it was sunny, it was super windy and cold.  We've decided we just don't really like Half Moon Bay.  The kids still had some fun.  Jaime got this great picture of a dead crab the kids found:

We were all sad to say goodbye them on Saturday.  We had so much fun! We're so grateful for family members who drive so far to come visit us in CA.