Day 13 (friday)

On our last day in town, the children made bead necklaces, crowns, and bracelets while the adults tried to decide what to do.  The beach water was still contaminated, so that option was out, so we finally decided to just leave it up to the kids.  Aaron gave them several choices, including a day in San Francisco, Carmel, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Happy Hollow, and the Oakland Zoo.  Not a bad selection. 

Guess what they chose? 
To go back to Gilroy Gardens!  The best part about this was that it was "bring a friend day" and enough of our family members that went had season passes, so it didn't cost us anything to get in. Score! 3 Cheers for a free day of extreme fun!

We decided to check out the other side of the park that we didn't make it to the week before, because the kids were too busy going on all the rides (since they had no lines).  They ran through the waterfall a bunch of times. This was Corbin's favorite activity of the day. There was no shortage of joy on this child's face as he ran laps around everyone to go through the falls again.

 The kids went through the rock wall maze. I took photos from the bridge above them.  Hey look, there's Paul and HolleeAnn...no making out, guys, this is a family place!

I don't know which of my children keeps playing with the new camera, but my sd card is full of these photo bombs of my dad. Hysterical.

 Quincy and Corbin took the sky tram while Reese and the boys hit the Quicksilver rollercoaster several times.

I love me a belly rubber.

The hot air balloon ride is one of my favorites. Quincy went on it twice. Once with Aaron and I and again with Auntie Amy.

 A cross section from a Giant Sequoia.  We really want to make a trip up to see the giant redwoods sometime.

And finally, cruising in the autopia cars.

For our last night in Ca we got more slurpees from 7-11 (ICEEs are just not the same thing) and hung out while the cousins soaked up every last minute that they could with each other. 

We let them stay up until almost 10pm (and regretted it the next day when the meltdowns of overtired kids kicked in while traveling) and they played games.  Reese learned how to play Farkle, and won her first game. She saved the score sheet for bragging rights (proof that she is totally my child) and asked me to post a picture of it, so Parker and Steven would never forget that she beat them. 

Quincy spent the evening in front of a pad of sketch paper at the table drawing pictures of dogs, mermaids, and dolphins. Corbin took up residence at the base of Uncle "Buddy" Paul's leg and requested to be dragged everywhere.  Paul clocked it as his workout for the day and obliged.

We brought back an extra suitcase of Ca goodness, a fat load of seashells and books, and many memories of a wonderful vacation in California.