Newport

We ended up extending our vacation a couple extra days. We originally planned to head home Saturday, but just before leaving on our trip we found out Josh's brother Nate had a week in his condo in Newport that he would not be able to use any longer and it started the Friday we were going to be leaving. So we stayed there Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night and made the whole journey home in one day on Monday. Our kids did surprising well on the drive home. We've never done the whole drive in one day and I'm so pleased to find out that we can! So on Friday we headed we checked out of our hotel in Anaheim and went to the Aquarium of the Pacific for something a little different from the Disney scene. It was a lot of fun. We got to see a shark feeding, a seal show, a scuba dive, and pet the sting rays.

They also had this lorikeet forest where you could buy a teeny little cup of nectar for $3 and feed the lorikeets. I think feeding the birds was our favorite part of the whole aquarium!

Maybe not Tanner's favorite part. We couldn't get him to touch a stingray either.

Camryn really wanted to hold one!

This is my brother Nate in his classic picture pose. We thought was funny that the birds were doing a similar pose.

After we'd have our fill of the aquarium we headed to the Newport condo but it wasn't really for us yet. My parents and brother decided to go do a session at the Newport temple so we headed over there to walk around the temple grounds a bit. It was fun visiting a couple different temples on this trip!

My parents and Nate took off Saturday morning to head home. So we just spent the rest of the weekend relaxing and swimming and hanging out at the beach a couple times. I highly recommend this way of vacationing. A couple days of relaxing in Vegas, a few busy days in Anaheim, and end it with a few more days of relaxing by the ocean. It makes for a long vacation but we got so much in, but didn't feel so tired that we needed another vacation after our vacation.

I have to brag a little. I took this picture at the beach and the next day I submitted it in a Pioneer Woman assignment. Out of 177,000 pictures submitted it was one of the 96 that were featured on her blog! I didn't win or make it as a finalist but it made me pretty darn happy anyways. :)