As usual we decided to take a road trip with no pre-planning... and it was a doozy! My brother is a planner... and so it was a surprise when he followed in my spur of the moment decision making and called to see if we'd be up for a visit, then was at the airport waiting to be picked up 2 days later! Since my brother brought his 2 youngest to visit, we decided with 5 toddlers we just had to head to Disney!
We left at 2am, thinking to drive all night while they all slept, which was a good theory but in practice it meant they were up at 5 with the sun and 3 hours to drive. The kids were great passengers except at our one all-inclusive stop for gas, breakfast, diapers, potty and changing from jammies to clothes, Gavin decided to take a head dive from the front seat to the parking lot. 30 minutes of Chris wanting to take him to a ER and me saying, "ehhh, he's fine" later and we were back on the road. Unfortunatly, about 30 minutes later we had our first carsick victim... Lauren, followed by Gavin (who we weren't sure if it was carsick or concussion related,) and finally Ruby. At one point I was sitting in the back of the van between the 3 frantically throwing bags/cups/shoes/etc at all of them! Once checked in, we realized that Lauren was still not feeling great, so she, Gavin and I stayed at the hotel while Chris braved the first day at the park by himself with his two and Ian. What a trooper! Just about the time I was debating taking a lethargic Lauren and Gavin to an ER, Gavin bounced back with his normal behavior of daredevilness (earning him the nickname of "Dangermouse" from Uncle Chris,) and Lauren perked up enough to be ready for everyone to get back and have dinner with us. (The next week we would find out she had a raging ear infection she was fighting the whole trip.) But the best news was that night we had a surprise knock on the door, Daddy had rearranged his work schedule and flown in to meet up with us and enjoy day 2 of the park... YEA DADDY! The second day was a whirlwind of rides, meeting their favorite characters and generally wearing themselves out. The hands down favorite ride for the girls was the rockets which we rode atleast twice, while the boys loved the cars they got to drive their Daddy's in! The best part of the trip according to all but Liam (who's favorite overall thing was driving the cars,) was meeting Tinkerbell. She signed all the kids autograph books, talked to them a little, posed for a picture, then kept coming back for more hugs!!! What a fun trip, and even with the rocky start was definitely a do-again!
On July 5, a holiday Monday, we planned a full day of fun with Grandma Hippo and Grandpa Penguin. We started out at 
Old Hangtown's Gold Bug Park and Mine for a trip through an old gold mine. We wore radios around our neck to hear an audio recording to better understand what it was we were seeing. It was a little hard as all the adults had to push our button simultaneously in order to try to all hear, and of course it never quite worked! The kids thought the temperature change, and the fact that REAL men had been there working a long time ago was cool... but about halfway through Lauren decided enough was enough and started worrying about how to get out. After the mine tour we took a scenic hike (they had LOTS of well marked nature trails on the property too) up to an old stamp mill. Even the small replica made so much noise that I can only imagine you could hear the full scaled version for miles when it was still in operation! Our final project at the gold mine was going to be panning - they had sluice tables set up with "gems" to find, but the kids were asking to head to the next stop, and the tables looked like giant mosquito magnets, so we decided to try that some other time! We had planned on picking up Subway sandwiches and having a picnic at our next stop - berry picking - but Mikey had an even better idea, we stopped at Lava Cap winery, bought a bottle of wine and ate our subs while drinking wine at their picnic tables overlooking their vineyard. It was beautiful! The only downside came when I wanted a picture of the kids on a lava rock and as I was explaining it apparently Ian thought I said he was going to have to sit ON LAVA... so he detonated and it took several minutes of explaining what once was hot lava was now just a hot stone! After the winery we continued on to our destination for berry picking, but where we thought would be u-pick only had pre-picked, but since it was a fudge factory we went ahead and bought some fudge and played on their wooden train. The woman at the fudge factory gave us directions to another berry farm for u-pick, Patrick's Berry Farm. Unfortunatley, everyone had the same idea earlier in the day because when we got there at noon, they had a sign up saying there would be no more berry picking for the day. Oh well! It was a full and fun day which exhausted the kids and adults alike - and we all learned something new!
