Pioneer Day

Our Pioneer Day was not spent in Utah this year, but we still made sure we celebrated with a fun vacation. We headed down to sunny California and stayed with Chris's mom for the whole weekend. We had a great time. On Thursday we went to a place called Heritage Park. It was a cute, historical kid-size village with slides and things to climb on, along with a pond filled with ducks. The kids had a great time feeding the ducks.

After we went to the park we went over to Chris's sister Amber's house and went swimming for a couple of hours.

Friday was, I think, my favorite day. We started out by going to a kids discovery museum. This is different than the one in Salt Lake. The one in Salt Lake is based on more imaginative play. This one is all scientific. It was fun!

Here's a picture of Caleb and I laying on a bed of nails. Truthfully, I thought it was pokey and slightly painful. I prefer my mattress at home!

This was Caleb and his uncle John and Grandma in a hurricane-wind-tunnel. The wind gusts were supposedly 78 mph.

There were a lot of other cool things in this museum, like a earthquake shack where we sat down in a booth and they simulated shockwaves from an earthquake, and a place where we could pull our own body weight up by using a different number of pulleys. We also watched a 4-D dinosaur movie. Caleb jumped a couple of times when he thought a dinosaur tail was going to whack his head and when he saw a pterydactyl beak come really close to his eye. There were some fun things here that Matthew could do as well, but it was mostly geared toward older kids.

Later that night we went to the Irvine Spectrum and rode the carousel, where both my kids had a blast--just look at their smiles! We also rode the ferris wheel. And then on the way home we stopped at a cold air balloon ride (filled with helium)--it was free!--and went up 330 feet into the air. It was my first time on a balloon. I thought it was a lot of fun. It was dark when we went, so we decided to go again the next morning and see everything from daylight perspective.
These next two pictures are cool--they are a shadow of the balloon we're in, and the second gives you an idea of how high up we were.

After our balloon ride Saturday morning we went over to a city park where there was a train to ride and a small zoo to visit. By this point Matthew was already tuckered!

Caleb found a fun vine to swing on!

After we packed up some food we headed on out to the beach where we played for a little while and roasted hot dogs and marshmallows. Caleb had fun jumping the waves with his dad (this was Chris's favorite part), and Matthew had fun playing in the sand. Unfortunately it was too cold for my taste so I stayed out of the water.

Our trip was a busy one, but we had a blast. Sunday morning we all ate blueberry waffles and we went to church before heading back home. I thought the boys cleaned up nice . . .