Faith, Family, Friends & DIY Fun: Traveling Adventures

We traveled down to San Diego on the Friday before Christmas to visit the Stephens Family. Our intention was to be completely packed up by 1:00 so that as soon as Rei was out of school we'd leave and hopefully avoid L.A. traffic. Our plans didn't exactly go as planned.

First of all Nick got off work in the late morning as opposed to the early morning. He had a list of errands to do but his first stop was to take our truck to the Costco tire department. You see, on Maddy's first birthday Nick was traveling out to Buttonwillow after an AM class for the fire department when he realized that the truck had a flat tire. Luckily he wasn't far from home and so the girls and I came to his rescue. We were really just there for moral support even though we all ended up getting dirty and greasy. Maddy was the only one who managed to stay clean because she had fallen asleep in the car on our way to meet Nick. Anyway, the Costco tire specialists informed Nick that not only was that tire bad but we had two other tires that were bad. So, he ended up replacing all 4 and had a wait time of about 2 hours.

We were only about 2 hours behind schedule by the time we ended up leaving our home in the hopes of traveling to SD to party with our niece Sydney who was having her 10th birthday party.

Once we were traveling on Hwy 99 which then merged into I-5 we were really moving. It wasn't until we hit the outskirts of L.A. that we slammed into gridlock traffic. After being cut off by a semi during the I-5 and 110 split we pulled out of the I-5 lane and began our adventure on Hwy 110. While on the 110 we missed the exit for the 405 and then found ourselves at a dead end town. So we stopped at the local Starbucks to get some treats and stretch. While in the Starbucks parking lot Nick ended up sitting on his coffee which went all over the drivers seat and floor not to mention scalding poor Nicks backside. When we finally ended up back on the 110 we took the 405 North when we should have taken South. But once we found the 405 South we were as good as gold and arrived at the Stephens' home at 10:30 PM.

Reilly and Sydney played dress-up on Saturday evening. These were their spy-girl clothes.

Nick and Natalie posing for the camera during our game of Chicken Foot.

On Sunday we decided to head to Knott's Berry Farm. We were all actually very excited about the trip, that was until we arrived to find the park super packed due to the fact that it was the last day for Toys For Tots... we had NO idea. Apparently if you brought a toy you got in FREE. It seemed like the park didn't have an occupancy limit or if they did they weren't enforcing it! The park was shoulder to shoulder and stroller to heal jam-packed.