Family Road Trip

The Warns Family recently set out on our very first family road trip! We have been too nervous to try this in the past, but with the increasing cost of airline tickets (and the fact that Annalie is now 2 and requires a full priced ticket!) we decided it was time to try our luck. After all, it would be cheaper to drive and it would be nice to have our car with us the whole time. Right? Right...

Our first stop was in Vail (one of our favorite places, which you can tell if you look back through the blog post history!). Our thought was that allowing the girls to run and play on the playground would wear them out and they would sleep for a good amount of the drive.

Pirate ship fun!

I love this plant. Anyone have any idea what it is? 

Exploring Vail

Things didn't work quite as planned. The park didn't wear them out, it energized them. They slept very little on the there - no more than 4 hours each throughout the night and it was sporadic. I spent all this time preparing activities for them on the trip and while they were a hit, I learned something about my kids - they won't rest if they're distracted by all that fun stuff! In fact, they will stay up ALL NIGHT LONG! Crazy girls. 

About 30 miles before we reached my folks' house we had some disaster strike... The transmission on our Acura went out. :( Luckily we were able to have it repaired, but we were laughing (or moping) because we drove so that it would be cheaper and so that we wouldn't inconvenience my parents by taking their car all the time. It ended up being more than twice as expensive when you consider the repairs and we still had to borrow their car!  Oh, well... Thankfully they are so gracious about it. 

Thank you, Dad & Mom! 

The first couple days at Mimi & Pop's we kept it fairly low-key. 

Amberlin doing Mimi's hair

Mikayla getting a ride from Uncle Andy

Cousin fun at Farrell's

Amberlin & Aunt Staci. I love how the TV is photo bombing them in the background! 

Balloon animals (thank you, Mimi & Pop!)

Andy & I split the Gibson Girl with the kids

Pop getting his birthday salute song

We got a ribbon for finishing the Gibson Girl! 

Evergreen (cont'd)

Just a few more shots from Evergreen from Andy's camera...

 

 

Evergreen

Sometimes I wonder why I commit myself to big projects like posting all about Hawaii. I am never going to finish that! I will try here and there, but before we know it a year will have passed and everyone will be wondering why am I still living in the past (unless you have been to Hawaii - then you will know why!). Plus it makes my procrastination so visible! Jeesh. I have to stop doing that...

At any rate, pause on the Hawaii posts and let's take a peek into this fantastic little Saturday outing we took this weekend to Evergreen...

Every time we come up over the hill at this point in the mountain drive, it just takes my breath away... it's such a beautiful sight and so majestic!

 

We had a great little picnic together before walking around the lake. The girls are very into picnics right now, so we are doing as many as we possibly can! Mommy & Daddy got grinders from a new favorite restaurant in Arvada (Goombas ... yum!) and we brought our lunch out to the lawn to enjoy on a BEAUTIFUL afternoon.

 Then we set up for our hike around the lake...

This is the last picture of Amberlin with her favorite little Disneyland sunhat. Just after this picture was taken a certain brilliant mommy let her wear it into the porta-potty. Let's just say we came out without it. It took a few minutes to calm her sobbing in between statements of "I forgive you, Mommy... it was a terrible accident!" Ugh. Bummer mom moment. I sure hope Disneyland is still selling those...

I don't think I have ever seen a mountain lake that I didn't think was beautiful and this one is no exception. It's so close to us that I was thinking it wouldn't be much to get excited about - but it was really beautiful and one of these days we'll be able to rent some of the pedal-boats without having to worry about our toddler falling into the water. For the purpose of this trip, a hike did just fine.

 Play time in the stream! The girls were so excited to get their shoes off and get in the water!

Amberlin was a hoot on these bridges... it freaked her out that she could see in between the wood planks and she thought the bridge was going to fall apart. At one point a plank that I was stepping on moved and her eyes got as big as saucers, her mouth dropped and she yelled "It's MOVING!" Lol... the humor may not translate into writing but take it from me... it was hilarious.

The puppet show theater they have for kids to play at in the Lake House was really cute. This kept Amberlin entertained for quite a while. I would show you pictures of the puppets, but she kept them all turned toward her during her show. :)

Then we just took our shoes off and played in the water for a little while. We threw rocks, ran from ducks, watched the pedal boats and  paddle-boarders. It was the perfect lazy Saturday!

 

 

  

 

 

 

It was an early-to-bed evening after all of the fun, so Andy and I ended up getting some quiet time together sitting on the front porch after the kids were down. What an awesome view on that evening! The perfect ending to the perfect family day (Well, except the whole dropping the expensive hat in the porta-potty thing.).

God has blessed us so much with so many wonderful family memories - this is just another one to add to the list!

LOST

Andy and I were huge LOST fans. From the time the show concept was announced, we were excited to watch and we attended an ABC preview weekend at Disney's California Adventure that included a parade, panel discussion and previews of the show before it came out. We didn't even know who the characters were, but we were stoked to see them up close in the parade.

{If you didn't watch the show, you can probably stop here. You are not likely to care about these photos!}

With that said, a small scream may or may not have escaped from the passenger seat when we came across this scene on a North Shore drive. The DHARMA CAMP!!

 

It's actually a YMCA camp for kids. There are signs everywhere that they don't tolerate trespassing and since there were kids there, we didn't want to interfere with anything. We just marveled from outside the camp. How fun!

This is what we were actually searching for on that day... the beach they filmed the plane crash on. It was beautiful and there were only a few locals there - no tourists (except us). The surf was pretty rough, though, since it was on the North Shore.

 

This was another beach we found along the way while we were searching for the plane crash beach. It was beautiful and empty! We had the great idea to walk along the shore until we found the right place, but your feet would sink about a foot into the sand with each step! It was a killer workout! We ended up heading back to the car to continue... :)