HOME IS WHERE OUR STORY BEGINS: California Vacation

When we made the decision to go to California for our first family holiday, Steve promised that we could do whatever I wanted - and that we did :) We had such a fantastic holiday spending time as a family but also visiting with many of our hunting clients turned friends.

We started our holiday by hitting California Adventure and Disneyland. Ezra will never remember this and I got my dose of it and will be content to never return until our youngest child is at least 8 (Steve will be happy with that as well!).

Ezra fell asleep within 20 minutes of arriving to Disneyland.

It's A Small World After All....Steve's favorite ride :) NOT!

And of course the classic picture :) What a fun day!

Our final night in Anaheim, we headed to Downtown Disney to have supper at ESPN and stroll around. They have a Lego store which is weak in comparison to the one in Downtown Disney Florida, but we still had fun :)

On of my favorite shots - Steve had never been in a Rainforest Cafe - so we went in just to look.

We headed up to Los Angeles for a day to see the Hollywood Walk of Fame (big disappointment to me), Rodeo Drive, and a wax museum.

It has always been a "bucket list item" of mine to be on Rodeo Drive ever since I watched Pretty Woman. Steve was a fantastic husband and willingly took me down.

I was super excited :)

We spent a few nights with some great people - Jeff and Gina Carpenter and their beautiful son Peaton. They took us to the San Diego Wild Animal Park and we had a great time seeing the many different animals.

Nearing the end of our trip, we headed down to San Diego and caught up with another friend, Paul and his family. We enjoyed the chance to meet Paul's family and also eat at his English Pub and enjoy some fantastic fish and chips.

We also went to the San Diego Zoo which was AMAZING!! We didn't get a chance to see everything (which means we will definitely have to go back!) - but we did get a good taste as to what is all there!

We went right when they opened at 9:00 which was perfect as it was feeding time so every animal was out being fed. The polar bears were a great hit for all of us!

On our way back up to Los Angeles, we stopped at Legoland which was nothing like what we expected - it is a HUGE amusement park! Definitely worth going to if you have younger children though! We didn't want to pay the full price - so we had an hour shopping fee and had to be out within the hour. So we quickly saw a bit of it and then shopped at the Lego store :)