California Trip

We were able to drive to California over Memorial Day to see my family. My mom grew up there and so a lot of my family is still out there. We stayed with my aunt and uncle, who are the BEST hosts ever. They have so much yummy food, a nice comfortable house, and they are just lots of fun!

We left on Tuesday afternoon and drove most of the way there. We stayed in Reno, which is only a few hours from my family, but it was nice to break up the trip and have a nice place to stay for the night. I got a picture of the beautiful Utah Tree. My dad always made the biggest deal when we would pass this when we would drive to California. Pretty weird.

We got to Lodi around noon and Owen was stoked to see Indy in the backyard. She is the best dog ever and so patient and nice. Owen just adored her.

We had lunch with my uncle and then headed over to say hi to my grandma. She lives at a nice retirement center right by my uncle. It is one of the least child-friendly places on earth with old people everywhere and breakable things, but we managed to do okay. And Owen cuddled right up to my grandma, it was pretty adorable.

Keith and Karen made some awesome dinners while we were there, including homemade fried chicken. It was seriously amazing and we are going to make it sometime soon!

We had a lot of fun big family dinners and my cousins have a bunch of kids so it was fun for Owen to be around them when he doesn’t see them often. He took a day or two to warm up but he did really well. Luckily he slept great and took two naps a day a few times!

They turned on the sprinklers after dinner one night and Owen just ran right in and loved it. It was hilarious an he didn’t even mind the cold water. He loved it and just kept running around and pushing his bus right in the water.

Those curls are my favorite. Too bad we just cut them all off! Ahhh!

On Friday we decided to drive to Big Trees State Park. We were going to go to the beach, but decided against it because of a lot of likely traffic with the holiday weekend. It just wasn’t worth sitting in the car for 4 hours with Owen. Big Trees was less than 2 hours and no traffic and it was great!

The trees really were big. They were giant sequoia trees and it was so gorgeous!

We did a loop through the forest to see the trees and it was just so nice and quiet and peaceful. It wasn’t busy at all and it was nice and cool with all the shade. Owen loved wandering around and we just took our time.

Owen gives Big Trees a thumbs up.

Owen dozed off in the stroller while we were walking so we sat down on a bench and just relaxed. It was really nice.

On Saturday we went with my cousin and her family to a little zoo and park close by. It wasn’t crowded and it was perfect for little kids. Her boys are 3.5 and 1.5 so Owen had fun with them. The zoo was fun and we went to the petting zoo afterwards.

Owen really liked the animals and they were pretty funny.

After the zoo we went to a little splash pad in the area and played for a little while. Owen loved Danny swinging him over the water.

Below is Owen and Kimball. Kimball is about a month older than Owen.

The kids had fun in the sprinklers again and Owen was standing on the chair just yelling and shouting about something. It was so funny!

We managed to get all the kids lined up on the table for a picture!

I really love this sweet baby.

Owen cuddled right up to Aaron.

This is the morning that we left. Owen looks way ticked, but he just wanted to get down and run around before we got in the car. We had such a fun time seeing everyone and just spending time together. I wish everyone lived closer so we could do this more often!