Day One--The joy isn't always in the journey...

On long drives at least, it tends to be in the destination!

Matt worked the night before we left, so I got everything ready to go, got up early got myself and the girls ready and packed the last minute stuff & hauled it all down stairs so that when he got home from work at 8:30am he just needed to shower and help load the car.

It was an interesting drive over as Matt had to sleep during the drive and I tried to keep the peace between the kiddos and drive while CONSTANTLY boxed in by wreckless semitrucks (which stresses me out).

One thing that I WISH I had been able to get a picture of was Isabel and the donuts.  I had asked Matt to buy ice (for the cooler) and gas on his way home from work, and he decided to also buy a box of donuts, so he would be able to just eat breakfast once we were on the road and not take up time (or at least that was the excuse for getting them:) the donuts ended up on top of the ice chest next to Isabel, which seems really stupid BUT in my defence, they were up higher than her head and so she couldn't see in the box, so I didn't think she would even know they were there.  Well after being on the road for about an hour and a half I realize that Izzie hasn't complained about anything for about 10 minutes, which is surprising so I check the rear view mirror and sure enough she has reached up into the donut box, managed to find the chocolate covered one and scrape off most of the frosting with one hand, proceeding to wipe it all over her face as she has been licking it off her hand, all while not being able to see into the box and barely being able to reach into it, she couldn't even pull the donut out, just scrape the top.  She was a HUGE mess.  I just had to crack up.  I really wish I could have taken a picture, but I was driving.  She must have good senses to be able to sniff out the donuts.  Anyway, Matt who I had to wake up to clean her off and move the box, since I was driving, was NOT quite as amused.

I am sure that you can imagine it just by looking at this.

We stopped in Blythe at pizza hut for lunch.  It was not very good, but the girls were glad to be out of the car for a while.  We were SUPER blessed to come out of the restaurant just in time to stop someone from stealing the stuff that was packed on top of our car in our rack bag.  Yeah, it was a little scary.

The rest of the drive was pretty good...except for me having incredible stomach pain and having to stop twice to throw up, I am pretty sure that I ate something gnarly at the buffet.  Good times.



Anyway, we made good time and got to the beach house before traffic got too bad and we were able to unload and take the girls down to see the water and let them play in the sand off of the boardwalk for little while before dinner.  It was great, the girls loved the beach immediately and Heather and Tommy were already there with their kids, and my girls just adore them all (especially poor tom), so they were super excited to see them.

In general the drive was no where near as awful as I feared it might be and once we were there it was so beautiful that even though I was exhausted, I was HAPPY :)

OK, so I will confess that all these particular pics are from day 2.  This is essentially exactly what happened on day one, but we were too exhausted to get the camera out and take pictures!  So I am inserting this into "Day1", since on Day 2 we took a TON more pictures and this post didn't have many.  Day 2 also contains our pics from...DISNEYLAND.  So that is why the girls will be in the same clothes in the Day 2 post.