Our trip to California this year was more of an adventure than it was a vacation. First there was some shopping and we found out that one of our favorite stores at the Block in Orange isn’t there any more. 🙁 Then there was Tyra’s near drowning incident and her hospital stay. But we had SO much more happen while we were there:
TIFFANY’S HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION
Yes my baby sister graduated from high school on the 25th of June! Wow it’s still hard to believe she’s that old! Actually she’s 17, which is how old I was when I graduated from high school. But her graduation is the last one in our family, (at least until Ethan graduates as Dad pointed out) and we had gone to California every June for everyone elses high school graduations, so we just couldn’t miss the last one!!
Actually Kyle did miss Tiffany’s graduation because he was at the hospital with Tyra. 🙁
MISSING WALLET!
Yes my wallet went missing. 🙁 Dad took me back to CHOC so that we could bring Kyle and Tyra home since she was being released, and as we were walking in the front doors dad said that I’d need my ID so the hospital can make me a tag so that I can get past security. So I went to my purse and my wallet wasn’t there! Dad said ‘What? You’re kidding?’ Really I wasn’t. My wallet wasn’t there. So I had to call Kyle and ask him to come down and help get me in while Dad called the house and asked mom to look in the room where Kyle and I were set up to see if my wallet had fallen out in there, and to check the van also. It wasn’t in either of those places. So Kyle ended up calling the banks and canceling all of my debit, and credit cards (and some of his in the process, because they shared the same numbers as my cards). And Kyle and I went back to the auditorium where Tiffany graduated to see if it had fallen out of my purse there. The auditorium was closed…and we couldn’t find a janitor or somebody to ask or to let us in. So we called a couple of the numbers that were posted at the box office and left some messages, and left.
Monday morning we just finished loading up the van. Had breakfast and then we got in the van and got on the freeway heading home, and right then Kyle’s cell phone started to ring. He answered it and it was someone from the auditorium saying they found my wallet! 🙂 And some keys….We hadn’t noticed any missing keys, but as the man described the set as having multiple flash drives and a car key with an H on it, Kyle’s eyes grew wider and wider. They were his keys! So since we had JUST got on the freeway, it was no big deal to turn around and go back to the auditorium. And I sat in the car with the kids while Kyle went in to claim my wallet and see if the keys were his. And they were. I’m just SOOOO glad we got my wallet and the keys back. I guess what had happened, is when we were there for the graduation I set my purse on the floor and got my camera out. But Chloe was being so squirmy that I wasn’t able to zip my purse shut. Then as the graduation started and Chloe was just crying and needed to fall asleep I went to go stand in the back. WHILE I was in the back, Dad said that the kids had been running back and forth down our row and during that time, my wallet and the keys must have been knocked out of my purse. But it was dark so nobody noticed. Then after the ceremony the lights came on and we picked up everything that we saw that had fallen out, but the wallet and keys must have been under the seats in front of us or something because we didn’t see them at all. But my purse didn’t feel too light or anything because I had both my camera and video camera, my phone, and palm, and Chloe’s bottle in my purse. So it was heavy and bulky and I didn’t even notice that my wallet wasn’t there until I needed it. But we got it back! And even though we replaced all of my cards that were in it I don’t have to replace my drivers license. 🙂 And the added bonus is that we didn’t get home THEN find Kyle’s keys missing. 😀
TOY STORY 3
We had been tossing different ideas around for what to do with our Saturday in California, and we were leaning towards going to Knotts Berry Farm, since it’s a lot cheaper than Disneyland or Sea World….or any of the other places that we were considering. But after almost losing Tyra we decided to do something a little less crazy and just take the kids to see Toy Story 3. Dad thought that would be a great thing to take the kids and do, so we went with Jenny & Tom and their family and Tiffany, and Grandpa and Grandma to the movies. We got there early so we could get enough seats to sit together, but obviously we didn’t get there early enough. By the time we got there there was already a huge line of people waiting to get into the theater room that was showing Toy Story 3 (that is INSIDE the theater, this wasn’t the line to buy tickets, dad got those earlier in the day). When the cleaning crew let us in the seats filled quickly, and we frantically looked around for a group of about 13 seats, but Tom just walked up and we started taking some seats in one of the upper rows. There were two people on the end, I had the lucky pleasure of sitting next to them. And then we just filled in the rest of the available seats, but there weren’t enough. So Jennifer asked the people at the other end of the row if they would mind moving down a couple of seats so that we could all sit together, and they gladly obliged. The next group in though would NOT move, for ANYTHING. Jenny had politely asked them to scoot over so our group could sit together and this rude person responded with “Well you should have got here earlier” and a comment like that to Jennifer, means that she was NOT going to be nice back, she ended up flat out telling these people that they were being jerks, for being so rude. I guess they wanted the seats in the exact middle of the row, and that’s what they had and therefore, they were not going to move. So we just kind of lifted up the arm rests and had all the kids squish so that we had maybe 3 kids in 2 seats so we could sit together. And actually Mom & Dad sat somewhere else since they saw that there weren’t enough seats for all of the rest of us in our row.
The people that I sat next to offered to trade seats with Mom & Dad so that they could be with the group, but Mom & Dad were happy with the leg room that their seats provided and so they didn’t switch.
Then the movie began, which went pretty well. Aside from Tyra getting up and walking down to where Kyle and I were multiple times through the movie to ‘get a drink’. Kyle had to take Dinah out twice, once to wash her hands because she was sticky and once to take her potty. He also had taken Chloe out once because she was a giant sticky mess from the lolly pop that she had had. But other than that the movie was good, we really liked it. But towards the middle end of the movie, the lady sitting next to me, leaned over and said “It’s really hard to concentrate.” Then as she looked at Chloe whom I was holding at the time, “With the baby”. I just leaned back over and very sarcastically said “I’m REALLY sorry”. OK I am sorry, but it’s obvious that this lady does not have kids! Chloe wasn’t being loud or throwing a fit of any kind. However, she is still just a baby, she doesn’t understand being quiet (unless she’s sleeping) she doesn’t know how to sit still, she just wants to explore everything. So yes I admit that Chloe was squirming and making a bit of noise, she likes to try to ‘talk’ as every baby does. So I’m sorry that this lady was unable to “concentrate” on the KIDS movie that we were all there to see, it’s not like the movie was that complicated to follow… But Chloe was NOT being loud or obnoxious (because YES then would have taken her out to try to calm her down before coming back in) she was just being a baby and it makes me SO SAD that this lady seemed to expect my baby to act like an adult in a movie theater. And after this whole episode it became apparent to me that she had offered to switch seats with my parents because she didn’t want to sit anywhere near kids in the movie theater, and that is also sad.
FAMILY DINNER
Sunday evening we went over to Sandy’s boyfriend Robert’s apartment for dinner. And some of us got to walk across the street to check out Sandy’s studio apartment. We had a great time chilling together. My parents brought the x-box and had David set it up to keep the kids occupied by playing “Monkey Ball” I think they did that the entire time we were there and they only stopped to eat dinner. Then we decided to have everyone since “Happy Birthday” to Chloe since her birthday was just the weekend before.
So our trip this year was more of a stressful adventure than a vacation. And I’m ready to go on a real vacation now. 😛