Family VayCay in CA Part 1

Breakfast at the Hampton

Cayden not sure if he wants to go in the water.

Yeah, the water is a bit cold.

As far as Cody got to the water.

Cayden was adamant that he was not wearing his swimsuit. It took forever to get all the sand out of his shorts.

My lovely sunburn.

Posing outside the Hampton.

We always must find a frozen yogurt shop.

Our hotel in Hermosa.

Crepes and funnel cake at Downtown Disney.

The Lego store.

We decided to take one final trip together before Cody moved to Utah.  We left on Tuesday June 14 for Hermosa Beach, California.  We drove into Vegas to get lunch at In and Out Burger then proceeded with Pam's help to our destination.  Pam is our GPS on Don's phone-Pam is map backwards.  We stopped a few times for potty and treat breaks and hit traffic of course on one of the multitudinous Cali freeways.  We stayed at the Hampton Inn  in Hermosa Beach who welcomed us with fresh cookies.  We have to get 2 rooms because of the size of our family but unfortunately we could not get connecting rooms.  We ended up being 2 doors down from each other.  Don took Caleb and Cayden and Cody, Cayden and I stayed in the other room.  We ordered pizza from a delivery place later that night for dinner.  Wednesday started breezy, cool and cloudy but by 11:30 when we finally made it out of the room it had cleared up sufficiently to go to the beach.  The Hampton offers a free hot breakfast every morning so that was super for us.  They had choices of fruit, cereal, yogurt, toast,muffins, english muffins, and bagels plus hot waffles you could make and some sort of hot choice like eggs and sausage or bacon or something.  It was all very simple but very nice for the kids.  We all especially enjoyed the daily cookies and they also had hot chocolate you could make any time of the day.  We left our hotel Wednesday morning to go exploring a bit and find a beach.  It was still relatively cool but after we drive up the coast a bit we found Venice Beach and decided it was a nice place to hang out for the day.  The water was cold but the sun stayed out for a few hours before the clouds came back which was just long enough for the kids to dig in the sand, boogie board and for Cody and me to lay on the beach and get sunburned.  After about 2 hours we had all had enough fun and so we found another In and Out Burger  and headed back to the room for showers and a rest before dinner.  While I took a little siesta, Cody played gameboy, and Caleb and Cayden watched TV.  Don and Connor walked across the street to Von's for some waters and snacks. For dinner we headed to Olive Garden.  It was not a successful dinner but it was dinner none the less.  We thought there was a Coldstone close to our hotel but after Don, Caleb and Cody walked up and down the block a few times and around the shopping centers, they could not find one so we had to opted for ice cream bars from the hotel shop.  Cody and I both did not apply sunblock appropriately and his back was toasted and my knees were fried.  It was very painful for both of us.  Thursday morning we slept in, started  packing up and heading to Anaheim.  After Connor's not so lovely few days we decided to let him make a choice to go home where we thought that he would feel much better.  It was either that or we all left and went home.  After we packed up we headed to Anaheim where we got settled into our next Hampton.  Don and Connor took a shuttle from the Hampton in Anaheim to LAX.   Did I mention the TSA safety drill that happened the exact time that Don and Connor were going through security?  It is a good thing that Don is a very calm person and travels quite frequently.  Even while he had no clue what was going on until AFTER it was over, he stayed calm and kept Connor as calm as he could.  It did not last more than a few minutes but there was a lot of yelling, noise, and a siren plus numerous frightened and unsure people.  Could they have picked a better day to do that?  Don said that he had never in all his traveling been part of a drill.  Thanks TSA for your "help". After the drill they were able to fly uneventfully to Las Vegas.   Grandma and Grandpa met Don and Connor in Vegas where they did the hand off and then Don turned around and got back on a plane to fly back to LAX where he took a taxi to our hotel.  If he would have driven to Vegas he only would have saved himself about an hour or two but he would have been driving the whole time.  He got back to the hotel around 9:30 and we ordered Chinese food from some place who did deliver but overcharged us by about $20.  While Don and Connor were traveling, Cody, Caleb, Cayden and I went to Red Robin and ate overpriced burgers and then went back and rested while we waited for Don.  Cody did take the boys down to the pool while I took a a little nap.  It was a little cool so they did not stay down there long but atleast there was a pool. After a little siesta we drove to Downtown Disney and wandered a bit and ate a crepe and a funnel cake.  Cayden wanted to spend his money from Grandma Penny at the Lego store and we found that the Build A Bear there had 2 levels.