California 2009

This past week Kara, Cooper, Sophie, and I went to California. Thanks to Rand and Bradley we had a wonderful place to stay. The weather was beautiful and we had tons of fun. I took tons of pictures and didn't want to post them individually so I made collages to post instead. Picasa is AMAZING!!!

Hollywood Boulevard, Santa Monica Pier, Third Street Promenade, and the beach in Carlsbad were some of the places we went to. We, of course, had to make a stop at Pinkberry as well. Cooper loved taking his picture with Batman, but Sophie wouldn't even consider it. "They were all too scary!!"

We played at the beach one of the days. I spent another day at the beach while Kara and the kids went to visit her friend Angie. I love the beach!

We walked the canals in Venice which are awesome. There are so many amazing, yet expensive, houses there. Plus a few random pictures of the airplane/car.

The Butterfly Jungle at the Wild Animal Park. This was probably my favorite part. It was this big jungle like thing with butterflies everywhere. They would land on you and just hang out. One of the workers said that they are attracted to the smell of beer and we saw many people with butterflies on their lips. It was pretty awesome!!

More Wild Animal Park

Random Campout/Vacation Goodness! More to come!

Willeys Wisit Wenice!

Lucky us! We got to spend a very fun day with Mo, Lo, Je, and Er in Venice! I couldn't stop taking photos of the gorgeous (and very, very funny) girls, of Gunther the Cali Surfer kid, and of the visitors we had sharing their home with us. It's is always comforting to have the dolphins swim with us, since that means there won't be any sharks (they don't get along). Thanks for coming Willey's. Next time stay LONGER!

FIRST CAMPING OF THE YEAR!!

Kelly and I took our first trailer trip. We went to Palisades State Park.

There was a lot of snow on the mountains around us, but none in the park or on the golf course. We had a lot of fun golfing and relaxing.
We visited and shared a meal with Ostlers---we enjoyed that.
I had another picture, but have back spaced it away twice, so this will have to do.
Our interesting first meal was enjoyed with corn skewers!! We found when we got there that we didn't have any forks. It was interesting eating the salad with them---it was a first for us.
[ps. we had about 100 spoons and knives--go figure]

ST. GEORGE HOME SHOW

We enjoyed our time last week seeing the St. George home show. The weather was ok----not quite warm enough for me, but not too much rain. Car problems caused us to miss our only tee time, so we were sad to miss out on golfing this year.
Now for a short tour....

Clayton's personal favorite--the cave. One of the homes had a built in cave, it looked just like a cave except the bed, chairs, and things in the alcoves.

This is where the cave ended!! Nice hot tub, huh!! To the left you could swim through a waterfall and be in the outdoor pool.

Unique pool

Unique cupboards [same house as the pool]. How would you like everything in your cupboards and refrigerater to show!

This was in the laundry room of a home with 21,000 sq. ft. No that is not a typo. It also included...

a bowling alley--2 lanes

20 or so pinball machines, and many more things

This was a cool train--the tracks went around the whole room on the ceiling.

One of the homes--

Cool idea. I loved the bead board with some on top and some below, they painted just wall on the sides.

Best new idea! These are spice racks that pull out on either side of the stove. When they are in they just look like decorative wood.

All of the homes have nice pools. This was the largest pool.

This is the 21,000 sq ft home.

Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of our favorite house. I left the camera in the car.

Fun to see them, but not reasonable to live in!!