We had a wonderful time watching our kiddos play around together during the afternoon. It was so great to catch up with Chris and Cath, as it has been six years since we had last seen them.
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| William having lunch and chatting with their eldest son Austin who is only a few weeks older than William. These two got along so well. |
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| Alex being king of the castle, while the younger boys played underneath the jungle gym. |
That evening was surely one of the major highlights of our whole trip. We really had a great time hanging out with our friends and it was so nice to see our boys getting along so well together.
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| Alex and William walking on the sand of Huntington Beach. |
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| The boys found a hole and Cath played with them in it. |
The boys playing at Huntington Beach.
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| Cath and the boys ready to tackle some waves. We really hadn't intended on going more than ankle deep into the water. |
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| But the waves were pretty intense and came very quickly! |
The boys playing amongst the waves...until the waves
completely took them over.
completely took them over.
After being completely taken over by the waves and rescued by Auntie Cath, we took the boys back to the fire pit to warm up (the water was pretty cold). I ran to the car to get a change of clothes for the kids, and the boys had a quick wardrobe change for the remainder of the evening. There was sand and salt water everrryyyywhere.
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| William and Alex after they had taken a dip in the Pacific. |
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| William worked up an appetite after getting soaked. |
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| Alex playing in the sand with Chris and Cath. |
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| William and Alex enjoying their apples by the fire pit. |
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| Me and Jojo at Huntington Beach. We had such a great time catching up with our old friends. |
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| I enjoyed a little white wine in a mason jar while the boys played. It was a perfect evening. |
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| Alex enjoyed watching the sun set on the beach. |
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| Time to make some s'mores!! Cath and Chris rented a fire pit and chairs for the evening and asked the company to bring a s'mores kit with skewers as well. It was really awesome! Here's Joseph, William, and Alex toasting some marshmallows at the fire pit. |
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| Alex enjoyed the s'mores and so did their eldest son Austin (in the background). |
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| William was pretty tired and fussy at that time...so here he is, crying into his s'mores in Joseph's arms. |
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| William perked up a little bit when he discovered that he could have more toasted marshmallows. |
The boys enjoying dinner at the fire pit.
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| William playing in the sand during sunset. |
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| Did you know that marshmallow skewers can double as light sabers? Lol! Here's Alex, William, Austin, and little Mason (who just turned 1) playing around in the evening. |
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| "YAAAHHHH!" :-) |
Thanks so much, Chris and Cath, for your incredible hospitality and for letting us crash at your place. We had an awesome time catching up with you guys and the boys are still talking about how much fun they had with Austin and Mason.
The next morning, we had a quick breakfast together and then got ready for our next (surprise) adventure! The boys didn't know it, but we were headed for some fun at the Disney California Adventure amusement park!!
We were so excited to surprise them with this fun-filled day. They had never been to Disney Land before (only Disney World), and we were so excited to take them.
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| Joseph, Alex, and William, getting ready to go onto the shuttle that took us to the park. |
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| Joseph and the boys on the shuttle. |
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| Me and the boys, ready to take California Adventure by storm! |
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| Me and William being whipped around on Mater's Junkyard Jamboree. |
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| There's Joseph riding with Alex. |
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| Alex and William, ready to watch the 4D Bug's Life show. |
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| Alex on Flik's Flyers. |
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| Me and William ready to ride as well! It's so nice that a lot of the Disney Land rides are so tame that I could still join in on the fun. |
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| Little Heimlich the caterpillar. |
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| Me and Alex and Joseph with William, ready to ride the Heimlich Chew Chew Train. |
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| Woo hoo! About to enter a large watermelon tunnel. |
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| Joseph and Alex walking around California Adventure. |
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| Alex and William were so excited to meet Donald Duck. This was the only character we were able to meet with because the lines were so long for the other characters and the only character breakfast that we could find was offered at 7:30 a.m. Wayyyyy too early to get up and be there by that time. |
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| William, Donald Duck, and Alex, snuggling together. |
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| And now they're goofing around. :-) |
The boys playing around at Disney Land.
Towards the middle of the day, the lines for the rides got to be longer and longer. The more coveted rides had understandably longer lines, of course. We asked the boys if they wanted to ride the Toy Story ride and explained that they would have to wait for at least 45 minutes in line. They still insisted that we go on it (I was kind of glad...it's a really fun ride!).
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| While we were waiting in line, the employees lent each person an Etch-a-Sketch toy to play with! Isn't that awesome? Here's Alex and William playing with them. |
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| Midway through the long line, William got pretty fussy as was quite hot and tired. So, Joseph picked him up, gave him a Dum Dum lollipop, and William immediately fell asleep in Joseph's arms. The poor little guy was just too tired and still needed a little nap. |
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| Alex, ready to play the games on the Toy Story ride. |
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| Afterwards, William really wanted to ride the carousel. Alex was riding the happiest looking sea otter we had ever seen. |
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| Joseph and William on the Little Mermaid ride. |
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| William was mesmerized by some of his favorite TV characters that were in this puppet show. |
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| Alex was totally into it, too. |
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| The boys watching the bubbles fall onto the audience. |
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| Alex thought the snack vending machine on the Monsters, Inc. ride was pretty funny. |
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| William was getting tired again, and asked to be held by Joseph. He just snuggled in Joseph's arms. |
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| On the way to our hotel room, Alex thought he'd be silly and put his C3PO Mickey hat on top of his Purdue hat. He was quite proud of himself. :-p |
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| William and Alex enjoying their spaghetti and meatballs that evening. |
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| HA! The Disney employees handed us this brochure while we were in the parking garage. I thought it was hilarious that the Disney parks do not allow selfie sticks inside the park. |
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| Joseph and the boys with their C3PO Mickey hats on the shuttle the next morning, ready to take on Disney Land. |
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| Me and the boys at the entrance to Disney Land. |
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| Our cutie patooties ready to ride! |
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| Alex checking out Buzz Lightyear. |
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| William was so excited to fight Emperor Zurg. |
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| Joseph and Alex were stoked as well. |
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| Our little space ranger. |
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| William making a meal out of Joseph while we were in line for Finding Nemo's Submarine Voyage. |
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| Handsome Alex with the Matterhorn in the far background. |
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| Joseph and the boys, ready to board the submarine. |
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| Alex was mesmerized. |
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| It was a fun ride! |
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| Me and William at the Star Tours ride. |
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| The REAL C3PO...the boys were completely awestricken. |
The boys getting ready to go on the Star Tours ride.
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| Right before we were about to board the ride, a bunch of Storm Troopers came and stood by us. |
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| The boys completely short-circuited and couldn't believe their eyes! |
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| Our little Star Wars fans admiring the Storm Trooper. |
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| Alex, William, and Joseph, ready to ride Star Tours. |
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| Me and the boys in front of Sleeping Beauty's castle. |
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| It's much smaller than Cinderella's castle in Florida. |
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| William loooooooves riding carousels! |
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| Alex, getting ready to ride Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. (One of my personal favorites!!) |
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| He was so excited to see Mr. Toad. |
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| Alice in Wonderland ride!! Another one of my favorites, and I was so excited for Joseph and the boys to experience it as well. |
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| Me and Alex, ready to ride and have some fun in Wonderland. |
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| Alex and William with Monstro the whale from Pinocchio. |
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| The boys cooling off and hanging out in the shade. |
The boys outside of the Enchanted Tiki Room.
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| A bonus of seeing the Enchanted Tiki Room show is that the line for the coveted Dole Whip (pineapple ice cream) is much shorter on the inside. I couldn't wait to dive into this Dole Whip smoothie!! It was amazing and worth the hype! |
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| Mmmmm!!!! Sooooo good and really refreshing. Baby girl was dancing around inside of me after I had it. I think she was saying, "Thanks MA!" |
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| Alex and William ready to see the birds put on a show. |
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| The Enchanted Tiki Room. |
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| William asleep in my arms in the line for the Jungle Cruise ride. |
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| After that, we headed over to the Pirates of the Caribbeanride. The boys loved seeing all of the pirates and enjoyed singing along with the song. |
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| Alex approved of the mini beignets. |
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| So did William! Thanks for the recommendation, Diane! They were delish! |
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| Alex saying, "Mmmm!" to all of the "Hunny" jars at the Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh ride. |
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| Then we got a fast pass to go on another one of my favorite rides: The Haunted Mansion. |
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| Joseph and the boys walking through the graveyard. |
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| Me and the boys with Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse. |
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| Alex and Joseph on their way to Tomorrow Land. |
The next morning, we packed our things up in the car and drove about an hour and a half to West Lake Village to visit Joseph's cousin Chris and his family, as well as Joseph's aunt, uncle, and grandmother. We were very lucky to have so much family in California that we were able to visit and hang out with.
As soon as we got to Joseph's cousin's house, we piled back into the car and went out to lunch.
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| After lunch we went to this awesome ice cream place called "The Ice Cream Lab." Here's Uncle Shengyen holding William so that William could see the ice cream being made. |
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| They put all of the ice cream ingredients in an industrial grade mixer, mix the ingredients, and then blast it with a little bit of liquid nitrogen! Cool, huh? |
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| Alex was amazed. |
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| The boys enjoying ice cream with "Tai Tai" (their great-grandmother and Joseph's grandmother). |
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| Salted caramel pretzel ice cream, so sweet, freshly made, and no preservatives. Really good! |
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| Joseph playing with his cousin Chris and wife Maeve's dogs Bentley and Louis. The boys had a lot of fun running around with the dogs. They have such sweet temperaments. |
Later that evening, all of us went out to dinner at a lovely Italian restaurant.
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| Joseph's cousin Chris (on the right) with his beautiful wife Maeve, and silly boy Alex at the restaurant. |
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| Chris and Maeve have two absolutely darling 5 month old twin girls named Shellie and Vera. Here's Maeve with one of them. Alex played a little bit with his baby cousin at dinner that evening. The girls were so mild-mannered and well-behaved. It was so lovely to finally meet them! |
That next morning, we went out to breakfast with everyone except for Maeve who had to work. We enjoyed a delicious breakfast and had fun catching up with the family.
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| Tai Tai, Alex, Me, William, Joseph, Chris, Soo Fong (Shengyen's cousin), Joseph's aunt Nellie, and Joseph's uncle Shengyen at breakfast. |
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| Tai Tai and William holding hands as they walked out of the restaurant together. So sweet! It was so great for the boys to hang out with their great grandmother again. |
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| Little man was ready to go back to Boston after having so much fun in California. |
So proud of our big boy!! He's officially completely potty trained!
Boo yah, big guy!
It took the boys a couple of days to finally get over their jet lag, which I didn't mind at all. My pregnancy insomnia is starting to kick in and I've been having trouble getting to sleep (so it was nice to sleep in a little bit). Both boys slept in until past 10 a.m. the following two days and William still took a nap in the afternoon. It was nice for us to all decompress from the very busy vacation that we had and to ease back into our daily schedules.
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| Oscar enjoyed the morning snuggle time with me on the couch before the boys woke up. |
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| You can tell he missed us a lot. |
This was a very special trip for all of us and it was so wonderful to be surrounded by so many family members from both sides. The boys loved playing with everyone and we loved catching up with everyone.
Lots of memories were made on this trip overall and it was a great way for us to get away and have special time together as a family of four before baby girl joins our family.
Until next time...
Love and kisses,
Nikki
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