California Adventure Part I: SoCal

No, I am not really cool enough to use that abbreviation.

We have returned from our first official family vacation that we planned ourselves around the Litster family reunion/Rachel's wedding. It was a really great trip, despite a few mishaps. Prepare yourself for a series of posts detailing our fun. I’ll try to make it unboring.

We set off on Thursday morning, June 5, a little bit later than planned, as we are wont to do. I was stressed to the max worrying about if I’d packed everything and how things would go with Dane. He woke up the day before with a 101° fever and a runny nose, which was attributed to teething. But he seemed to be in pretty good spirits, so we set off as planned. We took a pit stop to nurse him, and we were surprised to find a good two inches of snow on the ground. Joel took full advantage of the situation and was quite proud of his results:

Next we drove on to St. George, where we stopped for lunch. Joel called his good friend from Texas, Jason, and he was able to meet us for lunch at the swanky Wienerschnitzel. He and Joel reminisced and got caught up on life. We laughed a lot, and it was fun to finally meet him.

I love how happy Joel looks in the picture. They had a lot of fun together.

Then we were in for the long haul to Los Angeles. Considering we had to stop more often for a sick baby, and that we were in St. George for a couple of hours, I think we made pretty good time. As we were nearing the buzzing metropolis, we found out that the hotel that had been arranged for a significant chunk of the people coming in for the family reunion was…unsuitable. Various Litsters toiled to get us some reasonable, clean accommodations, and we arrived at about 11:00, just about when things had finally been worked out. We were definitely ready to sleep. Except for Dane. He decided to wake up about a million times. Now, he is not the world’s greatest sleeper by any stretch of the imagination, but this was really bad. I was suspecting that something was wrong besides teething, but what could we do? ‘sigh’ Lose sleep, that’s what.

Anyway, the next morning, we had a lovely family breakfast where we finally met up with everyone. It was really good to see various family members that we haven’t seen in a while. And then…beach time!

Notice that Dane is crying/about to cry/experiencing a very brief respite before crying again in every picture. This was his worst day; it’s too bad he couldn’t enjoy the beach more. The water was quite cold, but I wanted to be able to tell him he’d been in the Pacific Ocean, so I let the tide wash up over his ankles. And he screamed. Poor guy. He wasn’t feeling well. It was a nice little beach, though, and we had fun hanging out. It was pretty close to LAX, so every few minutes, a huge jet would be taking off for Japan or Korea…jets are loud. But the beach is always nice, even with a fussy baby.

Then we went back to the hotel to quickly get cleaned up before dinner at the park, and to realize that we both really sunburned the backs of our legs. Mine wasn’t nearly as bad as Joel’s. His legs are still red. Anyway, we hurried over to the park, only to discover that, notwithstanding the fact that we were almost an hour late, no one else was there. Apparently, everyone without a baby (i.e., everyone else) decided to keep hanging out at the beach. Until 8:00 pm. And that message was never communicated to us. So we hung out by ourselves at the park for a couple of hours. We actually had a good time. I climbed a tree and retrieved a Frisbee that someone had lost (swish), and we enjoyed relaxing in the grass until everyone found their way home from the beach. Then we set up tables, etc., for the wedding luncheon the next day and managed to grab some dinner right when this little Thai/Chinese place was closing.

Dane decided not to sleep again that night, so I made an executive decision to stay at the hotel with Dane during the sealing so he could have at least half a day without being bustled around. But Joel went, and I’m sure it was beautiful. Here are a few pictures Joel captured:

These are a couple little cousins admiring Joel’s tie, The Hulk. Joel had a good friend make this for him a few years ago out of old curtain material from Allen and Monique’s old house. Since then (2003), he has kept the rest of the material with dreams of the Von Trapp Family persuasion. Well, I finally made it happen in time for the wedding, but I of course failed to take a picture. So if any of you cousins out there have one (and I know some of you do) please pass them along to me.

Hooray for wedded bliss!

Then, the luncheon, through which Dane slept a happy amount. Then, we got lost getting back to the hotel. But this (and the fact that various other people got lost, too) led to us deciding to grab dinner in Burbank with LJ, mom, and Jen, which was super fun. There were a million shops and restaurants and opportunities to talk and hang out. Even Dane enjoyed it:

But our reveling in Burbank resulted in us getting to the reception really late…after Rachel and Chris had already left (don’t tell her; I don’t think she noticed). But it looked like a great reception. I’ve rarely seen a church cultural hall look so unlike a church cultural hall.

That night, Dane slept a little better, thankfully. But still not great, leaving me tired for the family breakfast and church. (I say “me” because Joel doesn’t seem to hear Dane as often as I do, which makes sense when we’re at home and he has to work in the morning, but I didn’t think it would hold when Dane’s crying five feet from us. I’m not complaining. Well, maybe a little.)

Then we said our goodbyes and headed off to Bakersfield to visit my aunt and uncle. We definitely had a great time, though I took far too few pictures. I’m hoping to get some that Becky took. But it turned out to be extra good that we spent a couple days there because Dane needed a slower pace. And then when his cough became rattling, he needed a doctor. Surprise! Ear infection! I must say, he was surprisingly good natured considering his ear was aflame. I never would have figured it out myself because he had no fever, he grabbed his ear no more than normal, and there was no screaming, only increased crying. But I will not complain. I’m glad we got it figured out.

On Monday night, after a day of wrestling with many doctor’s offices, trying to convince them that they are on my insurance’s out-of-state network, we got Dane taken care of, and Becky and Stuart took us out to P.F. Chang’s. Oh man, that made me so happy. They were so accommodating and generous to us. Hunter (my nine-year-old cousin) was really antsy to get home to present his FHE lesson, but we made him wait so we could eat and relax. Joel earned it after spending the better part of the day (and night before) playing the Wii and Gamecube with Hunter and Colton. They also played war with the neighborhood kids. Here is Joel all suited up:

When we did get home for FHE, Hunter was all ready. He started us off with an opening prayer, praying that “Dane’s ear attack will end.” And if that wasn’t enough to make you smile, after he finished praying, he said, “I couldn’t remember what it was called. Ear invasion?” Then he gave a good little lesson.

The next morning, we prepared to head out to visit my Grand Pa in Concord, near Oakland. It was hard to tear Joel away from the video games, and the boys were really sad to see him go. We always have a good time with them and love hearing all of Stuarts funny jokes. And I had a really great time talking with Becky and admiring her scrapbooks. It is too bad we don’t live closer to each other. I wish we could hang out more. But we had a great time and were grateful that it was fun without being stressful. As we drove out of Bakersfield, we saw regular gas for sale at $4.99 a gallon, and stopped at Jack in the Box to adorn our car with a Jack ball and eat a Monster Taco. We thought it was a fitting tribute.

(I will have to fill some of you in on the significance of the Monster Taco later).