Road trip for Christmas

By -
It happened again this year. December came around and we realized that Josh had a use it or lose it situation with his time off. Rather than lose it, he took from December 18th-January 5th off. It was delightful to have him around for those weeks. Since he had such a long time off work we decided that a road trip to Los Angeles, to visit Nana and Papa, was in order. In case you are wondering, that is just over 2,200 miles round trip. Wow. What were we thinking?

We drove straight through on the way down and it took 19.5 hours. We arrived early in the morning on the 23rd and spend most of that day recuperating. The following day (Christmas Eve) we went to the beach. It wasn't great beach weather by Southern California standards, but it felt great to us. It was in the 60's and sunny almost every day we were there. In addition to hitting the beach, which we did twice, we also visited an aquarium, the LA zoo, and a train museum. We ate at a few of our favorite restaurants, visited with some friends, saw the new Star Wars movie, and had a really wonderful time spending our days with Josh's family. I'm not sure we will make that drive again any time soon, but we sure enjoyed our time there. 

Josh and Eli playing in the waves on Christmas Eve.

Eli got a train set for Christmas. He loves playing on it and I love setting up the new tracks. It's a win-win. 

The dogs had a nice Christmas too.  

Touching a starfish. Eli did not love the touch tank at the aquarium. The starfish was the only thing we could convince him to touch and only after much persuasion. 

Eli wanted to take a picture of the fish. I love that you can see his reflection in the glass. 

My favorite shark

Eli spent hours in the back of Papa's truck with Luna, Jake (Papa's dog) and the tools. He loved "working" with all the tools. 

Going off to build a sand castle. Our first and second building sites were washed out within minutes of beginning to build. Third time was the charm. 

Our completed castle. 

Running from the waves. 

This guy.

Most of the time we would run from the waves, but sometimes we would stand and let them rush over our toes. I misjudged how high this wave would splash up and we got a little wet...

After we got hit by the wave. 

Father and son

Papa, Eli, and Josh. Three generations of Conley men.

Checking out the chimpanzees at the zoo. (L to R: Eli, Josh, Lauren, Nana)

We had a great trip and love spending time with our family. It was a fantastic way to end 2015 and begin 2016. We are looking forward to all that 2016 brings!

Comments

  1. RebeccaJanuary 27, 2016 at 4:50 AM

    It was a great Christmas visit and we loved having everyone here! The holidays are made for family and having your precious family here made the holidays extra special for us. Thanks for the long drive :) We love you!

    ReplyDelete
  2. AngieFebruary 2, 2016 at 10:10 PM

    You got some fun pictures! What a fun trip. Thanks for sharing!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

It's a Birthday!

By -
Image
Please welcome the newest member of our little family. Elijah Clayton Conley was born at 7:11 am on Saturday March 16th. He weighed in at 8 lbs 4 oz and was 20 inches long. This little man won us over with his first little cries and we are loving him more and more each day. For those of you who are interested in how it went down, the narrative is below the pictures. Just after birth. Cleaning out his mouth and lungs. First snuggles with his Mama Showing off his little chin dimple Just about the cutest thing I've ever seen First family photo Meeting Uncle Dan and Aunt Ashley for the first time Proud Papa Going home! Lounging with his daddy On Friday afternoon (the day after my due date) I started having contractions that were fairly regular but far apart and not at all painful. I hoped that this was the beginning of something but wasn't really sure. Josh's mom flew into town that evening so we picked her up and then went ou
Read more

To Give Sorrow Words

By -
One month ago I found out I was pregnant. This was exciting news for us because getting pregnant is not easy around here. I have PCOS which makes pharmaceutical intervention necessary and it is still not an easy process. With Eli it took only 3 months on medication to get pregnant, but this time around the same medication was not working and after almost a year I was still without child. (Is that a phrase? I doubt it.) So I started taking an additional medication and we were thrilled when it worked the first month. Perhaps by now you have caught on to the fact that I'm using past tense when referring to a pregnancy that, had all gone well, would now be 8 weeks along. But all did not go well. Just over a week ago I had some bleeding after playing volleyball. It was late when it happened so the next morning I called the doctor. They wanted to see me that day for an ultrasound. Josh met me at the doctor's office and together we received some of the worst news of our lives. The ult
Read more

Blanca Lake

By -
Image
I know what you are thinking, "Great, another post about hiking. Don't they do anything else?" Well, no. We don't do anything else BUT this isn't just a hike post. We went camping too. :) And thanks to me, the camping part is a story worth telling. Since our attempt at an overnight on Labor Day weekend was a bust we were determined to make it work this time.  It gets dark too early now to leave work and have enough time to backpack in, so our plan was to car camp near the trail head and do the hike the next day. I started looking at different places to camp and found out that a burn ban was in effect, which means that you can't have a campfire unless you stay in one of a few designated campgrounds. Campgrounds are not my favorite but we really wanted to have a fire because camping without a fire is crappy, and we needed a fire since foil dinners are tough to manage without one. Friday after work we set out and arrived at the campground around 7:30pm. We drov
Read more