CA Trip

We had a great time after New Year's Eve going to CA!  It was our first visit, and first chance to see Disneyland, so we were happy to have nice weather and see lots of beautiful sites.  The best part was celebrating Avaleigh's 1st birthday...she thinks all birthdays have to be with princesses now!

Here's a picture before flying out on January 1st.  It was an early flight, and you can see Avaleigh was excited:

This was Avaleigh's first flight, and Gavin found a little dino who hadn't flown before either:

When we landed at LAX, I was pretty excited to see the home of Tesla motors, but no time for a tour this trip :-)  If you really zoom in, you can see TESLA on the top of the center building...

Since we wanted to see some sites, it was fun going to a few beaches before calling it a day (and getting rested up for our first day at Disney):

This is one of my favorite pics (thanks Jen...)

On our first day at Disney, we went to the California Adventure park, where Avaleigh celebrated her birthday like a princess (with the princesses):

Gavin had been excited about seeing his favorite cars, and was convinced all of them were real (except for the mean tractor, who was an "actor"):

Really, we had a 5 minute discussion about how Mater and Lightning McQueen are real, and it's hard to argue with a 3yr old, when it comes to life-size talking cars!

On the second day at Disney, we went to the Disneyland Park.  I'm not really sure why Disney calls Disney World's equivalent park the Magic Kingdom, and doesn't have a unique name for the Disneyland park, but we had a lot of fun (especially riding the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad):

Jen and the Kids on Big Thunder Mountain

We also celebrated Avaleigh's birthday some more (Mickey style, with everyone's own cake):

One of the coolest parts about Disneyland was "It's a Small World," which was all lit up for the holidays!

Gavin's favorite part was finding out dinosaurs are still alive, and they like to fight for the tourists.  The next day he told me, "Dad, you said all the dinosaurs are dead, but they have some at Disneyland!"

The coolest part of the trip (for me) was going to see the Space Shuttle Endeavor!  Jen surprised us with tickets, and we had lots of fun seeing an A-12 as well:

Here's a pic of me explaining to Grace that I worked on some payloads that went up on these shuttle missions.  She tried to act impressed...such a sweetie!

You would think I enjoyed this part of the trip the most, and yes, you'd be right!  It really makes you proud to be a citizen of the greatest country in the world...I hope we someday find the financial prosperity to have a viable space program again.

We wrapped the trip by visiting some more beaches, and eating at the never disappointing Boiling Crab (visit the one in Dallas, and I'm sure you'll agree):

We can't wait to go back, and understand why so many people call CA home :-)