A special visit

We used to have a tradition where every Christmas, we would make a day trip to see my great Uncle Charlie.  You can see our last trip here.

Charlie will turn 99 in September, and has trouble seeing and hearing.  After our last visit where the whole family was together for lunch, it was too much for him and he decided that he didn't want to do the Christmas lunches or have visits.  The boys loved going to see him and always asked when we could go visit him.

Charlie moved to a new care facility after a couple of falls, and during a visit earlier this week with my cousin and uncle, he told Uncle Dave that he would like to see us.  That was the invitation we've been waiting for, so we hopped in the car today and drove 3.5 hours to see him.

It was a quick visit, only about 30 minutes, but he really enjoyed seeing the boys. Dave did a great job telling him about how old the boys are and what they are up to.  My voice is evidently at a pitch where it's hard to hear, so Dave was able to tell him what we said.  I'm thankful Dave was there with us!

When we were getting ready to leave, he said 'come back and see me!'  We will definitely do that - don't want to miss any chances to see him!

Artist on the road

During our drive to visit Uncle Charlie, Karsten decided to draw the Spiderman statue we saw at a truck stop. I'd say he did an awesome job!

Magic Tricks

The boys had such a great time when Trent watched them last summer, we knew we had to make it an annual tradition.  We picked Trent up on Tuesday night and he watched the boys Wednesday - Friday.
I think the boys talked his ear off from the moment he arrived to the last wave goodbye.  I know the boys had a super fun week, I hope Trent enjoyed it as well!

We had a game night - I was the Aggravation winner!

We had a second game night and played Rapid Doodle.  This is such a fun game, the cards have shapes on them like zig zags and you have to make a doodle that turns it into something. Some of these doodles were hilarious!

I came home from work one afternoon and this iw what they were doing. I'm not sure they could get much closer to Trent. :)

Trent planned a bunch of magic tricks to teach the boys, and they put a magic show on for us on Thursday night.  It was awesome - the boys did a great job and it was obvious that they had been practicing hard with a great teacher!

Don't you love the magician hats?!

Enjoy the show!

We celebrated a fun week with Trent by going for ice cream!

Ramen!

Today was Trent's last day watching the boys, so we went to meet Kelli and drop Trent off.  We decided to hit our favorite Ramen Noodle shop (okay, the only one we've been to) on the way home - it was delicious.  I wish it was closer to home - it would be a great spot for carryout!  I had the Kimchi Ramen and Scott had the Pad Thai.  The boys loved their chicken ramen!

Wheels

Karsten and Liam had both been working hard on chores and other odd jobs to earn enough to buy a bike.  Well, Karsten was earning to buy a bike, but Liam was just earning with no idea about what he wanted to buy.  

Until this summer, the boys had had zero interest in their bikes, they preferred to ride their scooters.  I had pretty much given up on bikes for them.  One day, they started riding their bikes around the garage, and they wanted to go for a bike ride; however, by then, they had outgrown their bikes.  

Once Karsten had saved enough for his bike, we went to Walmart to pick it out and realized the bike he had been eyeing was actually too small for him, but was the right size for Liam.  As Karsten tried to decide which bike he wanted, Liam was riding around on the bike and decided that he wanted a bike too! 

They're both doing a great job riding, and I think Karsten will ditch those training wheels pretty quickly!

Summer Vacation - And We're Off!

Typically, when we leave for vacation, we hit the road early, either to catch a flight or start our road trip.  Today, our flight didn't leave until 10:50am, so it was nice not to have to be out of the house super duper early!

Those suitcases back there were packed to the brim - just under 50lbs for each of them!

We made it to the airport with plenty of time to spare, we don't like to cut it too close so we always give ourselves plenty of time.

The boys love to watch the planes coming and going, so they spent lots of time at the windows.

They're turning into traveling pros - we get to our seat and get the ipads and headphones out.  They wanted to watch Netflix, so we had to remind them how Netflix and several other things require the Internet which they didn't have on the plan (I know...first world problems).

We had one stop on our flight, but didn't have to change planes.  It was my first time of having a layover but not having to get off the plane.  We were probably on the ground for about 30 minutes and were able to move closer to the front of the plane and stand to stretch our legs.  Then, the flight from Phoenix to San Diego was short, only 45 minutes.

After getting our rental car, we headed to our rental condo.  We were all excited to finally be in San Diego and thrilled to check into our home for the next week.  Our balcony overlooked the bay - we'll spend a lot of time here!

I bought a selfie stick to take with us to Colorado and San Diego...I forgot it for our Colorado trip but remembered it this time!  Now we just have to master it!

It was so nice to have the kitchen in our condo, we also had two bedrooms and bathrooms down the hallway.

Before we headed out to get dinner and groceries, we had to go out to the bay.

I did some searching on Yelp for a nearby dinner spot and we settled on a place the received rave reviews for their fish tacos.  We cruised by three times looking for the restaurant, then finally realized it was the food stand where all the people were.  We decided to give it a try, and the food was great, but it's a challenge to eat at a food stand with two little boys.  Liam wanted to take dinner back to our condo so we could sit at a table, Karsten was too busy watching people to eat.  We eventually took our food across the street to a patio attached to the grocery store we were going to shop at.  It ended up being a good dinner - we were all just tired and a bit hangry.

After putting our groceries away, we headed two blocks away to the beach.

The beach was gorgeous with a nice cool breeze.  And look, we're getting better at the selfie stick!

We didn't plan for the boys to get 'in' the water, so we didn't have them change into their trunks when we went to the beach.

After playing for a bit, Liam's jean shorts were pretty wet, and he was NOT happy.  He managed to get over it, but there were some tears because he wanted his swim trunks and wasn't happy that we wouldn't be coming back to the beach tonight if we went home to change.

Scott and Karsten had fun playing catch on the beach.

The boys had so much fun in the crashing waves, they would stand in the water or try to run away when the water came in.  Endless fun!

He wasn't too upset about being wet.

It was a great first day of vacation - we're going to have a great week!