We finally took our first big family vacation! We went to Southern California, and crammed as much as we could into 8 days. We arrived Saturday, rented a car, and drove straight to the
San Diego Zoo.
The hippo was the star of the show for our kids. We watched him for a long time. After the long day of traveling and walking the zoo we checked into our hotel and then were off to dinner and then to the San Diego Temple (it was breathtaking). The next day was of course....SEA WORLD! 
We had so much fun. The kids spent hours playing in the tide pools and were all wet by the time they were forced to move on to something else. They could have played with starfish all day! We drove back to Anaheim that night and checked into our hotel there. Our room was more like a condo then a hotel....kitchen, living room, kids room (with bunkbeds), master bedroom, and 2 bathrooms....we could have moved in there and been happy! Monday came and we got up bright and early and headed to the HAPPIEST PLACE ON EARTH!
Every family needs a picture in front of Disneyland. We had 5 day park hopper passes and still could have done more there.
The kids got to meet several of their favorite characters, and get their autograph books signed! But they prefered to go on the big coasters! No one is scared at our house. Of course, mom just got to watch and take tons of pictures. Wednesday we took the kids to a Dodgers Game! It was hot but we had a lot of fun at the huge stadium.
Ethan got a souvenier baseball, Haylee got "sweat bracelets", and Andy got a baseball hat. 
And we all got DODGER DOGS! It was a great day. Thursday we hit Universal Studios. Ethan loved it because we got to see more "action heroes" then "princesses".
Even Haylee loved the super heroes. She gave wolverine a huge hug. We did Disneyland a few more times, then on Saturday before our plane left we went SOUVENIER SHOPPING! Downtown Disney had a lot of fun stores for the kids to shop and play at.
We spent half the day at the ESPN arcade.
The Lego store was the coolest. They had several characters and things built out of legos. Our kids liked the Star Wars characters the best! We ended up with buckets of legos to take home. We had a great trip, but it was great to come home. Our kids are already ready to go back...hopefully it wont be that long before we get to do it again!