From The Beginning: California family vacation days 1, 2, and 3

We have been planning this trip since i was pregnant with Korbyn. It was the big 10 year anniversary of when we went for out family reunion in 2009. Since then the family has literally doubled in size! 2 more of us got married and all together we had 9 more kids! Since it was for a reunion we had to have some planning meetings. So the kids knew we were going and That it would be near Halloween, but we never told them exactly when we were leaving. We decided to keep it a secret till the day of ( for 2 reasons we felt it would be more exciting this way. And that they would sleep better and be in better moods for the drive if they weren't excitedly counting down the seconds.) This meant that i had to get everything packed and planned with out them realizing what was going on.

I prepped snacks! These things were awesome and kept the kids excited, and helped the time pass by we let them open it and pick a treat every half hour or so.

The plan was for me to pack up the car while the kids were at school the day before but it rained the whole time they were in school! I didn't want wet luggage or to have to walk in that to get the kids, so that got post poned to the next morning.

I also prepped these bags with extra treat and things for the kids to do in the car to keep them happy.

The morning we left i had a meeting at the school so i took the girls in daddies car so he could get the last min packing and errands done while i did my meeting. When the meeting was over i checked the girls out of school and excused them for the fallowing week of school (so they wouldn't be calling us non-stop.) They were both a little confused as to why i checked them out so early in the day. I asked them "What have we planning to do for a really long time now?" They were both in shock that it was FINALLY happening but squealed with excitement. I took them home to change out of their uniforms while we waited for daddy to finish the errands. Erilyn was so excited she forgot to change and frantically asked me if i had everything packed! We were on our way. We took my computer so the kids could watch movies on the drive. They thought that was pretty cool.

Opening their first bags.

The drive was so pretty!!

We stopped in Vegas for 2 nights The younger 2 were excited to share a room.

We purposefully didn't have much food in the house, because we didn't want it to go bad while we were gone. But we did take a cooler full of random food and ended up having to use some pop-able biscuits asap because they popped open. So we paired them with some chili and chips to get some energy before swimming!!

The water was quite cold but it was still fun to stretch our legs after 6 hours in the car.

This was our view of the strip from our hotel you can see the new farris wheel.

All showered after a long day.

There was a cat in the back of the hotel that the kids thought was so cool but, it made them miss theirs.

Erilyn thought it was cool to sleep on "The bed that came out of the wall."

The next morning we explored the hotel while we waited for our shuttle to the strip.

And watched movies.

The younger 2 kids weren't sure what this was!!

I think i need one of these vacuums the kids thought they were pretty awesome!!

Waiting for the shuttle driver, they thought it was cool that they didn't need car seats in it.

Korbyn was in heaven at "m,m world"

But zonked out not long after we left.

We explored the strip for awhile then headed to Excalibur for one of my favorites... The Tournament of Kings!

The rest of our group got seats on the other side it was fun to root against each other!

Korbyn LOVED every second of it and hardly touched his food!

Watching youtube on daddies phone.

The next day we drove to California. We got to the hotel about an hour before check in and our rooms weren't ready yet, plus everyone else was still driving. So we killed some time by going to the beach we let the kids feel the water on their feet and play for a bit.