Our Family Vacation

We just got back from our fantastic family reunion vacation with my whole family except my brother Ryan and his family. Their daughter has a shunt in her head, and it became clogged and the fluid was building pressure on her brain. After almost a week of doctors and misdiagnoses (is that a real word, not sure) she ended up being life-flighted to Primary Children's Hospital in SLC from St. George. She had surgery to replace her defective shunt parts, and is slowly recovering. Needless to say, with all that happening less than 2 days from setting sail, they had to cancel their cruise at the last minute. So while we were sad they couldn't join us, we were soooo relieved to hear that Jayla was doing better and recovering. So last Monday, the 16th, we drove down to Long Beach and set sail on the Carnival Paradise. We went to Catalina Island the next day and let the kids play at the park, and rented golf carts to drive around the island. Then we split up for a while and Brian, and the kids and I went and played at a place some would call a beach, (not me.) The next day we stopped at Ensenada, Mexico. We took a shuttle out to La Bufadora, one of 3 natural blowholes in the world. (I wouldn't mind seeing the other 2. One is in Australia, and the other is in Hawaii.) It was amazing, and the kids thought it was so fun to have the mist of the spout get them super wet. We watched it for about 40 minutes, then did our souvenir shopping(haggling.) I got a cute purse which is real leather and cannot be burned with a lighter (they showed me at each place,) Erick bought some sunglasses, and a Batman luchador cape and mask, and Rachel got some fancy sunglasses. They were so proud to pay with their own allowance money. (I think it helped them get better deals when they said, "This is all the money I have," with a sad face.) The kids had a great time being with their cousins, mini golfing, playing ping pong, going to shows, eating tons of food and ice cream, and getting a lot of attention from our waiters. Rachel was the only girl with our group, so they called her "princess," which she secretly loved, and Erick was called young man by our fun waiters Donald and Edguardo. Friday morning we got right off the boat, and drove straight to Disneyland with just our family and my brother Brandon. Thanks to our awesome brother in law, Chris, and his family Disneyland and California Adventure was great even on a busy day. We bought a 5 day park hopper with them and shared the cost breaking it down to $38.50 per person per day. So they went Tues-Thurs and saved up all their extra fast passes for us. So all day Friday and Saturday we walked on all the fast pass rides. As long as we used them at the correct time they didn't care about the date, sometimes they didn't even care if we had one per person. We figured we'd try and the worst they could do was say no. But that never happened. So 30 minutes at Disneyland was our longest wait for Haunted Mansion, and 40 minutes for Toy Story Mania at CA. Not bad for a busy weekend huh???? We were die hards at the parks trying to go on everything before it closed. We were all exhausted, but we had a blast. I wouldn't say it was relaxing though, I think we need a vacation from our vacation! :) We were so thankful to get to have a fun adventure altogether as a family!