As most of you know we took a roadtrip down to LA because Andy's friend/band member from Nexus was getting married. We both had some time off so we decided to turn it into our very first Koning family vacation and see lots of our friends that we haven't seen since moving up north. It was a really great trip. We drove down Monday morning, leaving stormy Northern CA only to arrive in southern CA in 80 degree weather...yuck! The girls did great, it was quite a long drive so we were all ready to get there but overall the drive was a success:)
Even the drive down was nostalgic...
The girls were very excited to reach our destination and stretch out...plus there were toys waiting for them:)
The first two nights we stayed with a friend and old Professor of Haley's from Biola. Rachel and her husband Carlo have a 1.5 year old daughter so all the girls had tons of fun together.
The first night that we were there the 2 older girls were having so much fun running around playing that Myla finally showed some interest in crawling and she tried to keep up as well:)
Avery of course loved Rachel and visa-versa:)
On Tuesday we headed to Biola and visited the nursing and music departments. It was a lot of fun seeing old professors and updating them on our current life.
Before visiting the departments Aves and Daddy enjoyed a drink on campus at "Common Grounds" which was very nastalgic. We then walked around the bookstore and picked up a few things before continuing on our adventure.
We of course had to have Avery and Myla take a picture with the infamous Jesus mural.
Tuesday night we enjoyed going out to one of our favorite restaurants "Jalepenos" with all the guys from Andy's band (minus Jackson). It was a fun time of celebrating with Grant and Lindsey would would be married in a couple of days as well as catching up with the other boys. After staying another night with the oh-so-gracious Rachel and Carlo we got up Wednesday morning and headed to Disneyland! We were prepared to go for a couple of hours and abort as needed but both girls ended up having such a great time that we stayed until closing (6pm)
We started in CA adventure where we rode a few little kid's ride in the bug's life area and then headed to Car's Land which is what Aves had really been looking forward to. Avery was just tall enough to ride the new rollarcoaster in Car's Land so her and I waited in line for 2 hours (I must say she did amazingly) and got to ride it, it was worth the wait. A very fun ride. We enjoyed an impromptu show while walking to lunch by the "Newsies" and Mickey Mouse which Avery thought was the coolest thing ever. After lunch we headed over to Disneyland where we spent a good amount of time in toon town playing around and then hit up some rides like dumbo, snow white, walked around the castle, jungle cruise, pirates of the Caribbean, etc. Avery was in awe, Myla was entertained:) We let Avery go into the "bippity boppity boutique" outside the castle full of princess things. Thankfully I went in with her without a wallet...Avery would run up to something, say "Mommy look!!! Isn't it the most beatiful thing you've ever seen?" She was enjoying it so much it made me cry. We let her pick out one toy which turned out to be a jewelry/music box (the pink one of course) and she couldn't have been happier. The rest of the afternoon she would run up to strangers, open her box and say, "look at my beautiful princess box!" Most people just continued walking but she didn't let it get her down, she just kept showing it to people:) We ended out time watching the parade through Disneyland which Avery thought was amazing. A link to the pictures is below.
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.787185637197.2150366.68602760&type=1&l=a88089d41f
When the park closed we headed to our favorite dinner spot in downtown disney called "Naples" and enjoyed pizza, salad, and beer/wine. Then we headed over to the New Orleans place to have beignets for dessert, it was a perfect day. That night we stayed in a hotel near UCI and we all slept in. The next morning we enjoyed room service and breakfast/pizza in bed:)
Thursday was a very low key day of sleeping in, eating, watching TV, etc. Then we headed to the Irvine Spectrum to have lunch with our great friend's Ben and Stacey, it was definitely a fun time.
The girls just loved Stacey:)
We ran some errands then headed back to the hotel for nap/play time.
Aves and Daddy couldn't stop wrestling on the bed while little Myla Bea just wanted to play with the remote:)
Once everyone was awake and ready we headed over to Uncle Jusin and Auntie Cake's house for some dinner and low key hang out time.
Aves of course loved hanging out with two of her favorites:)
Friday morning was the wedding! Celebrating with Grant and Lindsey was very fun and they had a very unique/lovely wedding. We were very glad we were able to be a part of it.
The wedding was the first time that all of the band Nexus has been together in years, so we of course we took a picture:)
After the wedding we headed over to the Whitsell's house for our last night of vacation. Avery loved seeing her friends Kaylie and Trey again and it was very great to meet their newest member (only 2 weeks old) Ashley and to introduce them officially to Myla. It was chaotic as you can imagine with 5 kids running around but it was perfect. Kaitlyn, Justin, and Melissa came over for dinner that night and we enjoyed eachother's company...it was just like we still lived there! (pictures are on the link above:) We woke up to an amazing breakfast made by Jennie Saturday morning and then hit the road for another long but good car trip. We dropped the girls off at mom and dad's so that we could unpack and dinner at my parents with other family and friends was the perfect ending to a truly great vacation.
Unfortunately reality hit hard at 0520 the next morning...but we won't go into that:)
Halloween pictures are also in the link above...we headed over to my parent's street where we went trick-or-treating with the Hiroto's as well. Then Mom cooked us all a big pot of chili and we enjoyed dinner together, a very fun night!
