Newport Beach

Ryan had Good Friday off work (kind of weird, but that's a market holiday, apparently.) He wanted to go somewhere, anywhere, but since we had to be back for a Primary activity Saturday night, it couldn't be far. So, he bid $51 on Priceline for a four-star hotel near Newport Beach and got it! We decided this would be a test run for vacationing with three little kids. We left Friday morning (the dogs stayed in the kitchen with the dog-door open - I'm becoming a big fan of dog-doors), and went down to Balboa Island. On the way there, we had to stop at a random store to change a furious little baby, and let Elise use the restroom. Yep, big news with Elise is that she's almost completely potty trained! Yay Elise! Everybody says that little girls are easier, and in this case it was definitely true. From start to (almost) finish it took her about three weeks. She's even in undies at night already. I'm pretty proud of her! Anyway, in the parking lot of the store we saw this awesome Little Debbie truck and just had to take a picture. It was actually delivering Little Debbie stuff when we pulled up. Very professional. At Balboa we walked around, flew kites on the beach, bought overpriced sand toys and hats (which we had forgotten), and ate frozen bananas. I was deeply grieved that their cheesecake on a stick was sold out. Deeply grieved. We also took one of those 45-minute harbor tours, which should have been really boring, but the novelty of being on a boat made it fun for everyone. The first picture is actually on the ferry heading over to the island, the others are from the tour.




The resort we stayed at seemed hardly four-star, but it did have three different swimming pools. We couldn't get the room heater to work properly, so we roasted all night. That combined with having two little kids and a baby in the same room with us meant we didn't really sleep. We haven't given up hope on the travelling thing, though. As Ryan said, "We need more data-points." Yeah, he's a nerd.

Oh, did you know that I gave birth to twins? Evan doesn't always get along with her, though. Also, a picture of my sweet kids. I kinda like them.