The past week has been incredibly eventful and fun!

It started when my sister and her family arrived last Sunday night. She, her husband, and three girls came to celebrate her two oldest daughters’ birthdays. On Monday we spent the day at the beach. Laguna Beach. My favorite beach. Parking usually stinks at Laguna, but this time of year it’s not too bad.

And of course they spent the mandatory two days at Disneyland. Miles and I devoted an entire day to Disney (using our beloved annual passes). The second day, I sent my sister with her husband and two oldest girls and I offered to watch their youngest (almost 3-year-old). Watching two little ones wore me out more than spending the entire day at Disneyland! I don’t know how mothers with more than one do it! By the end, I was counting the minutes until they walked through the door!

On Pirates of the Caribbean. Link freaked out on this ride and clung to mommy the whole time!

Link enjoys the carousel.

Waiting in line for the Pinocchio ride. Link didn’t dig this one either!

We found that using the backpack was much easier than a stroller. Link enjoyed just hanging out.

10-year-old Kiarah was brave and went on Space Mountain with me and her mom.

The birthday girls!

The girls’ favorite part was meeting the Disney Princesses: Ariel, Jasmine, and Belle.

Bell was their favorite.

My try-out pose for becoming a Disney Princess.

And this is Nate’s pose.

And here are the girls showing off their new princess merchandise. Notice Avery posing in her new Belle flipflops.

Here she is again.

And again

It was so much fun to see my sister and her family. I love my nieces to death. Nate is a stud and is so easy to be around. Their visit flew by. I miss them. Good thing I’m planning a trip to St. George in June!

So my sister’s family and my parents basically passed each other on the freeway. My sister left of Thursday for home, and my parents drove in to California Thursday night. My mom and dad were kind enough to watch Lincoln while Miles and I went on an overnighter (our first night away from Link) for our fourth anniversary. It was perfect! Link was an angel which made it so much easier to be away.

We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. We stayed in the Hyatt on the Back Bay in Newport. We ate at an amazing seafood restaurant (The Cannery) which is right on the bay. You can literally drive your boat up and park (if we had a boat that is). I had the crusted halibut with these purple sweet potatoes and champagne sauce, and Miles had the swordfish that had a nummy mustard sauce. Both dishes were incredible. We had two desserts that night. Decadent Chocolate Molten Cake from the restaurant and a Reese’s Chocolate Peanutbutter Carmel Apple from Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory. We had the left overs for breakfast in the hotel room!

Then, because we didn’t have our normal 7:00 pm curfew (Link’s bedtime) we went to a late showing of Star Trek. Miles loved it. And it was just alright for me. Just not my kind of movie I guess. But good for what it was.

We didn’t get to sleep until 2:00 in the morning! Then, we got to sleep in, but couldn’t sleep later than 9:00am. I guess that’s what happens when you get up at 6:00ish every morning (including weekends) for the past year. We were meaning to go for a run around the Back Bay loop trail right from our hotel room, but Miles forgot his shoes. Luckily we were close enough to home where we could swing by and pick them up. We finally got on the trail at about 1:30 in the afternoon. The run was hot, muggy, long (10.5 miles) and there wasn’t much water along the trail so we were miserably thirsty. I seemed like the worst run of my life! We did it though and afterwords we went straight to the closest gas station and bought 2 gallons of liquid (water and gatorade). Then we went and relaxed in the hotel hot tub and took a refreshing poolside nap. Ahhhh. Perfect!