Where Do I Begin?....

We just took our family vacation to southern California.  I have a million and one things to say so I think I'll break it down into a few posts.  Today I will summarize the awesomeness that was our vacation.

Our goals for this trip... visit the beach, shop, visit Santa Monica and Venice, go to Universal Studios and indulge! (aka: eat whatever we wanted whenever and wherever.)

So first of all, Raeleigh LOVES flying on an airplane.  This was her first trip and when it came time to take off she threw her hands in the air and shouted "Blast Off!"  It was too cute.  She was never fussy she just watched some of Wall-E and then slept the rest of the way (same thing on the flight back).

At the airport.

 

Passed out on the plane.

The first day we knew we wanted to go to the beach and my favorite has always been Huntington Beach (It's now Jake's favorite too.) so that's where we went.

 Ready for the ocean!

 

 Here we are!

 On the pier

We stayed at my aunts house and got to spend some good quality time with her.  LOVE HER!  Her and Raeleigh became best buds.  Every time Raeleigh got up from a nap she'd say "Where's Dianne?"  She always had to know where she was.  Or if we left to go somewhere and pulled back up in the driveway she'd say "We're at Dianne's house!!!!"  

Here they are.

 "Flower power. Cooool." ;)

Day 2 was Universal Studios.  We cruised around city walk and took the studio tour.  That was pretty cool because we got to see Matthew Perry while we were on the tour.

 

 On the studio tour.  The plane from War of the Worlds.

Day 3 we spent with my Uncle in Santa Monica.  We shopped on the Promenade and then strolled Venice Beach.

This pic is from Johnny Rockets on the Promenade.  A place I used to go when I was a little girl visiting out there.  It was neat to be able to take Raeleigh.

Clapping for the street performers in Venice.

Impressive!

In Santa Monica.

 

Day 4 was shopping and a stroll on the beach.

 

Day 5 was the beach again, shopping in Huntington, dinner with my aunt and strolling 2nd Street with my man.

 Day 6 I did something special for my daughter.  Last month I saw a link to "The Yo Show" on the coverpage of Yahoo and decided to click on it because it said something about Wall-E (my daughters ALL TIME FAVORITE MOVIE).  Long story short, there is a guy named Mike Senna who built a real life Wall-E.  He lives in Southern California, I got in contact with him and he invited us into his home!  It was so fun to be able to do this for Raeleigh.

 

On Day 6 we also went to the Aquarium with my Aunt and back to the beach one last time.

 

 

We were there for 8 days but 2 of them were travel days.  We had an amazing time.  My aunt also did some baby sitting so Jake and I could go on a couple dates.  We saw TWO movies!  We hardly ever get to see movies.  We finally saw Dark Night Rises and we also saw Premium Rush because I'm totally obsessed with Joseph Gordon Levitt.

GREAT vacation!