Porter Fam: Southern Cali Trip

Since I took 327 pictures in nine days (I actually thought there would be more, so it isn't too bad, really), I'm going to divide this huge trip up into five posts. More for my sake than yours.

And, no, I'm not posting all 327.

Probably closer to 300. *cough* ;)

Alright, here we go!

We left Saturday, Sept. 13th after Kaden's 9:00 a.m. soccer game. All morning Ari was acting lethargic, so we kept an eye on her. She threw up literally as we were finishing loading up the car (my mom's car that she VERY generously let us borrow!). There wasn't any way to postpone the entire trip, though, so I grabbed a puke bowl, extra clothes for Ari, and a whole pack of diaper wipes. She seemed to be doing much better after throwing up, though.

We only stopped a couple of times for potty breaks to St. George. It was dinner time when we were passing through, so we stopped at Red Robin (where else?). ;) Ari was doing MUCH better by then and had kept pretzels down, so we let her have some Sprite and she ate a couple of fries.

Ready to be out of the car!

So much love

Feeling better!

Occupied with one thing or another.

The kids said, "These mountains look different than the Utah ones!" haha

Four days before we were set to leave, there was a huge storm in Arizona/Southern Utah/and Nevada. Large parts of I-15 were completely washed away and forcing people to reroute 77 miles! Luckily for us, by the time Saturday rolled around, they had come up with a solution to avoid people rerouting. That also meant we got to see the damage done and progress made. (It was just outside of Vegas.)

Working on the new road.

Can you see the damage? It was crazy!

We finally got to Vegas and checked in to our first of four hotels. We stayed at Eastside Cannery. It's not on the Strip, but we really didn't care about that. It was probably my favorite of all our hotels we stayed in.

Snuggled in.

That little mini-bar came in SO handy!

As the kids were trying to get to sleep that night, we discovered that Ari can't handle anyone touching her while she sleeps. I ended up pulling the two cushy office chairs together and making her her own little bed. She LOVED it!

Sunday we planned for just a "relax and have fun" day.

Lunch at McD's. She didn't puke again after that first time. Whew!

We headed to M&M's world since none of us had ever been there.

It wasn't really all that exciting. Just a big store. The best part was the 3-D movie.

We rode approximately 5,473 escalators whilst in Vegas. True story.

"It's just fake, Mom." I was so glad they told me! ;)

I had read online about a "HUGE" aquarium at a hotel that was free to the public and also had a special surprise. The aquarium wasn't nearly as big as I was picturing, but the special surprise was great for the kids.

A mermaid!

So the mermaids are all scuba certified and there are several oxygen mask things around the tank. There was also a diver in regular gear who stayed fairly close by (he was in all black and tried to stay out of the way of pictures) just in case. She took some time with each of the kids at the tank and blew bubble kisses and hearts to them. The girls LOVED it! So, so worth going!

Hanging out at the waterfall area after seeing a "real mermaid!!!"

She passed out so fast on her little "bed".

Monday we drove another four-ish hours to our second hotel. At this point the kids still didn't know about Disneyland, so we decided to wait until Tuesday morning to tell them so they would sleep that night.