Christmas Break - No School - All Play!

Since it's Christmas Break, the kids are all home for two weeks! That means they have to find ways to entertain themselves, and sometimes that means doing stuff that Mom and Dad don't know about!

This first one is Jacob trying to be hidden from the camera. See how well he stays hid:

 

Here Marissa is practicing her pitching skills INSIDE the house!  She really throws the ball hard against the door!  Naughty girl!

 

This one Jacob invented and he calls it 'Couch Flipping'. As you can see, he is the best at it, and Hannah is still trying to perfect her couch flipping skills.

Happy Birthday Marissa!

So this week was Marissa's Birthday, turning the ripe old age of 14 on the 15th.  We first went to dinner at Buca di Beppo's but forgot the camera. We then went over to Grandma and Grandpa Gwilliam's house to share Marissa's birthday cheesecake, since we couldn't eat it all!

 

Meghan lit the candles......

 

Marissa made her wish and blew the candles out...

 

Even Grandma and Grandpa's new dog, Louie, was happy for Marissa's birthday, showing off by standing on his back legs and hopping around.

 

While at Grandma and Grandpa's, Meghan told them about her dance class at school and how they are on clogging right now, and Meghan is the only one in the class that knows how to do it, and she is even better than the teacher!  All those clogging classes so long ago are finally paying off!  Meghan showed some of her steps the best she could in her non-clogging shoes, and I had to secretly video her, but she finally found out at the end of her dance.

 

We then went home and Marissa opened up her presents.

 

I think this next photo was what happened when Marissa realized she was no longer a 'baby' and was now grown up enough that she could go to dances now since she is 14!  She said something like, "I am so old now, I don't have to wear diapers anymore! See???" and then proceeded to show us:

 

Then it was time to open presents: Here are just two of them: (Some of you may be wondering about the way she is acting in these videos. Nothing to be concerned about. She is always 'happy' like this!)

 

Earlier that day, Hannah wanted to prepare a special dance for Marissa. She she got out her Cinderella Dancing Lesson dvd and mat and practiced:

 

And here was Hannah's special dance for Marissa:

 

And of course, after family prayer, was the event Marissa was most looking forward to!  Do you remember our tradition?  Yep! The spanking tunnel!  We had to do my (Doug) spanking tunnel too, since my birthday was when we were in San Diego last month, and we didn't do it.  Bur unfortunately, the camera was out of battery or something like that during my spanking tunnel, but luckily, it was working for Marissa's spanking tunnel:

We love you Marissa! Happy Birthday!

Cyclops

So about two months ago, a spot appeared on Jacob's eye.  It never went away.  Jacob went to the eye doctor and they didn't know what it was, and said they wanted to watch it (an eye doctor 'watching' an eye - doesn't that seem funny?) for about a month or so to see if it changed. They even thought they may have to do a biopsy to see what it was.

Well, the 'watching' period was over this week, and Jacob went back to the eye doctor. They have a new fancy schmancy camera now that can take photos of your eye and the computer can see through them in 3D.  So they took one of Jacob's eye.

It was finally determined that Jacob had a freckle on his eye from being out in the sun too much without sunglasses.  Huh? You haven't heard that one before? Neither had we. 

So nothing wrong, just a freckle in his eye.  Here is the pic:

Gobble Gobble!

Well, here it is Thanksgiving time again!  We had planned on staying home and having a nice close Thanksgiving at Mom & Dad Gwilliam's this year, but then we got to thinking..and you know us...pretty spontaneous sometimes..we remembered we had <free> season passes to Sea World that we got last year that were about to expire, and already have season passes to Six Flags, and enough points to stay in hotels for no charge, and we hadn't been back to Utah for Thanksgiving in 4 years, so with four days to plan, we decided to go to Salt Lake via Las Vegas via San Diego via Las Angeles...  a big triangle from Roseville to LA to San Diego to Vegas to Salt Lake to Roseville spanning 2000 miles!  Oh my..when I looked it up on a map after we got home, I didn't realize it was so many miles!! Wow!

550 from Roseville to  San Diego (with a stop in LA)

750 from San Diego to Salt Lake

634 from Salt Lake to Roseville

We left early Saturday morning around 7 am to get to Six Flags by noon. We love Six Flags.  Magic Mountain in LA has the most, fastest, tallest and scariest roller coasters in the world.

We had to ease into the big rides by first starting with something a little tame:

Here are some other photos of Six Flags Magic Mountain:

 

This ride is one that has been around for a long time, often seen at fairs. You stand up and it spins and then lifts up. Mom and Dad can't go on it, but the kids love it!  Here in the pic they are at the top - Jacob is in dark clothing, Marissa and Hannah are in pink shirts. Meghan, where were you?

Meghan tells me she is in the white shirt next to Jacob with her head cut off. Sorry Meghan!

See if you can see them in the video!

 

Hannah started dancing as we were walking around, so Dad quickly whipped out the camera and started videoing...she makes us laugh!

 

Here is an ariel view taking from the Sky Tower:

 

Here is a video (taken from YouTube) that shows all the coasters. Yep, we have ridden them all!

The new coaster this year is called X2. You may have seen it in the video above just called X. It was built two years ago, but always had problems and was a rough ride. So this past year, they spent 10 million upgrading and improving it and called it X2. 

WOW is all we can say. Shelley didn't have the opportunity of riding it, and don't think she would have liked it.  Dad and Meghan  and Marissa rode it the last ride of the day, so it was dark out and that made it all the worse. Now I (Doug) have been on a lot of roller coasters in my life, and sure I've screamed some, but this is the first one that he screamed the entire ride and didn't take a breath!  I had to pry my hands off the restraints when the ride was over. Marissa was speechless - she didn't know what to say when we got off and Meghan was still trying to figure out where we were.

The layout is pretty simple...Track in the middle, two seats on each side of the track with nothing below you.  The twist is that each seat then rotates separately from the train. So as you are going upside down and twisting around, your seats are rotating as well facing you straight down to the ground as you go down the first hill and then the seats rotate again to get you ready for the loop.  You get the picture. Pretty technologically advanced.. Oh yeah, and there is fire that shoots at you too and mist and a soundtrack behind your head as you ride.

Here is a video (again from YouTube) showing you how it works: Watch how the seats rotate.

It was amazing!

So ended our first day of our vacation.

The next day we drove to San Diego and went to Sea World. It was much warmer than the last time we were here!  About 70 degrees  and nice and sunny. And it was Doug's bday too!

Here are some pics from there:

We got a little wet on the Atlantis ride.. a log ride/roller coaster that has an elevator in it for the ride!  Pretty cool!

Yes, that is a dog jumping rope!

Sea World is owned by Anheuser-Busch so they have the Clydesdale Horses there...You can see how big they are with Jacob standing in front of them! They are HUGE!

Getting ready for the 4-D movie

Even Marissa and Meghan liked playing in this HUGE play structure!

 

 

Here are a few videos of Shamu the Killer Whale

 

 

 

 

And that ended our 2nd day. Off to the hotel where Marissa was teaching Jacob and Hannah a new ride in the hot tub:

The next day we went to Cabrillo National Monument on the coast in San Diego. This is where Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo in 1542, stepped into history as the first European to set foot on what is now the West Coast of the United States.  There is a light house and tide pools to explore in. We had a good time there and spent most of the morning there.

This one is climbing the stairs inside the lighthouse to the top:

 

 

Early afternoon it was time to head North East. Towards Vegas. We said good bye to the humid scenic coast and said hello to the Mojave Desert!

We stopped on the way in Calico - a ghost town from an old silver mine. (Of course there were mutiple geocaches here too! as there were at each of our stops so far).

It was a pretty cool place..we spent a few hours here until it got dark. We pretty much had the place to ourselves. They have a train ride, a mine tour you can walk in and lots of exploring.

This house was totally made out of colored glass bottles:

School house in background above and inside below:

And as the sun set in the West, it was time to head East.

 

Before getting to Vegas, we had to stop in Baker to see the worlds tallest thermometer!  (and it was a geocache). It was 66 degrees.

We then went to our next hotel just outside of Vegas, in Primm actually on the border of Calif and Nevada. No free hotels here for us, but then they are only $12.95 a room, who needs a free stay?  It was perfect! 

The next morning we headed out for our final destination to Grandma and Grandpa's house in American Fork, Utah. The kids were surprised we had to actually spend about 20 miles in Arizona before we hit Utah.

We finally arrived!  Shelley's sister had a surprise for Meghan and Marissa and Shelley - all the girls (sisters, cousins, moms, grandma's) all went to see "Twilight" (move) and Meghan and Marissa were so excited! They loved it!

We then just spent time with family, ate a huge Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday, spent more time with family, and finally headed back home for the 10 hour drive Sunday morning around 6. We got home around 3pm and unpacked and then the girls and Shelley had to go to a church fireside.

Ahhaa!!  There is nothing like your own bed is there!?!?

Meghan and cousin Christine (from Idaho)

 

Grandma Bingham posing for the camera

Grandpa Bingham making yummy food

Shelley's Bro-In-Law Don (from Idaho) and Shelley's Grandma Leutze from Michigan

Marissa and cousin Jessica (who is very funny)

Meghan looking excited and Christine and Shauna (Shelley's sis)

Hannah and her cousin Ashlee

The day after Thanksgiving, myself (Doug) and Meghan did something they have never done before....gone shooting.. The 'boys' all go shooting and taught me and Meghan how to do it. It was a lot of fun!

It was over. Time to go back home. Sunday we left around 6am and made the 10 hour drive home and got home around 3pm.

On the way home near Reno, just two more geocaches. The first is a lava flow remnant left over from millions of years ago due to the highly active volcanoes and tectonic activity in this area.  The second is from a massive land slide that took place millions of years ago as well, again due to volcanic activity.  We've driven past these things so many times and never knew there was so much history with them!

 

Last year for Christmas we took a family vacation as our Christmas (spent the money for Christmas on the vacation) when we all went on our cruise. This year, we did it a little early (Thanksgiving). It turned out really good and we all had a great time!  Highly recommended!  Two thumbs up!

Thanks for reading and sharing our Christmas/Thanksgiving Family Vacation with us!