Driving Cross Country

July 10th - Visiting with Friends in Arizona and San Antonio, Texas

July 1st - Pictures of architectual designs

May 11th - Visiting Ridgecrest, California and Barnes and Noble

David and Hannah saying HI from Ridgecrest, California.

We visited a church called China Lake Baptist Church while in Ridgecrest.  They are located in this small storefront area.

David and Hannah enjoy a quick trip to the grocery store.  Don’t have this in Puebla, Mexico!

Sarah and Japheth can’t wait to get to the car to read the books they just bought in Barnes and Nobles.  We visited about 10 Barnes and Nobles bookstores on our trip.  The kids loved picking out new books and mom and dad loved the quiet in the car while they were reading!

June 16th, Darren Lambert, North Carolina

We enjoyed a few days in North Carolina with our friends Darren and Annette Lambert.

June 30th, Family Pictures, Encinitas, CA

Family picture with my BIL, sister, mom, dad and of course our family!

What a happy boy!

June 26th, Wedding Anniversary, Old Town San Diego, CA

We enjoyed a nice night out… without the kids for a change!  Old Town San Diego has always been a favorite spot of ours.  We used to enjoy going to Casa de Bandinis’s before it was relocated.  We found a place to park and wandered into a Mexican restaurant where there was actually a line of people waiting to get in!  Why in the world would we eat Mexican when we live in Mexico?  Simple.  The Mexican food in the states is 100% different than the Mexican food in Mexico.  I can’t find cheese enchiladas in Mexico!  Use yellow cheese… you can hardly find yellow (or cheddar) cheese in Mexico.  Olives or sour cream? Forget it.  Those are all American style ways of making Mexican food.  After dinner we wandered around the shops and little botiques before heading home to rescue grandpa from 5 tired kids!

June 18th - Cracker Barrel and Taking a Break at the Park

There is only so much fast food a family can take!  After spending almost two months on the road, our whole family was ready for as close to a home cooked meal as we could get.  Our kids ordered vegetables!  They enjoyed the corn, green beans, and carrots the most.  We actually stopped at Cracker Barrel several times on our trip after this stop.  Cracker Barrel was having a contest to collect stickers to win an RV and they gave you one sticker for each person in your party… with us that was 7 each time we ate!  We did not win, but it was fun trying to collect the stickers!

June 11th, Visiting Wonder Works in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee

This was a fun day!  We had to decide between driving through the Smoky Mountains or letting our kids get out and explore Wonder Works.  Even though we really would have enjoyed seeing the Smoky Mountains National Park, the kids, and mom and dad, needed a break from the car!  The kids enjoyed exploring Wonder Works and Japheth and daddy got to climb a rock climbing wall.

June 2nd - Beautiful Sunset in front of a mall

We decided to stop for dinner at the food court of this mall and took the picture of the sunset before going in.

May 21th - Petrified Forest in Arizona

The highlight of the petrified forest was seeing the actual Indian drawings on some of the walls.  I would not, however, call it a forest.  All of the “trees” were of course laying flat on the ground, but even then, they were few and far between and in the beginning we did not realize that that was ALL we were going to see during the driveing part of the tour. 

May 10th Visiting Friends in Ridgecrest

Our kids

We had pizza and pasta at Round Table Pizza before heading over to the park to let the kids run around before heading out again for the day!

Our kids enjoyed seeing the airplanes at the China Lake AFB.

Every day the sprinklers in front of the house / hotel we were staying in came on at about 5pm.  We let the kids run through the sprinklers for some old fashioned fun.  Hannah enjoyed it a few times but David wanted nothing to do with it!

May 4th, Warehouse

We have a few things to sell!  Anyone need a party grill for tailgating season?

May 29th - Solvang and Santa Barbara, California

Enjoying a park by the beach in Santa Barbara.

This was really fun!  With this 10 person bike, our family and the Sobrevilla family enjoyed an hour riding around Solvang, California.  Solvang is a little city with Dutch roots.  Most of the houses and stores in the downtown have Dutch architecture.  If you like wandering around shops and quaint towns, then this might be a destination for you!

We enjoyed some double hand scooped ice cream while in Solvang.

After Solvang, we headed down the coast to Santa Barbara where we spent an hour at the Santa Barbara Pier.

Japheth really liked the toy selection!

After the pier, we headed downtown and found a Farmer’s Market.  We decided to walk around and ended up in an open air mall area. 

More pictures of the Farmer’s Market.

May 28th - Solvang with our Friends the Sobrevilla Family

We choose Monday to visit Solvang with our friends the Sobrevilla family. Unbeknowest to us, about 95% of the restaurants are CLOSED on Monday night in this small tourist town!  We found this restaurant that was completely packed out with people so we accepted a table on the balcony even though it was coooold.  Being outside was probably nicer for us as we were the only one’s with so many kids at the restaurant… most of the other diners were couples out for a romantic weekend!

Check out the Dutch architecture behind this group photo shot!

It is fun that our kids can make friends wherever we go.  As we visited other cities later, our kids saw pictures of the Sobrevilla kids at various places and say “Oh wow!  There is a picture of our friends!”

Our kids enjoyed eating the green beans more than the chicken!

Me wearing my “mom hat” and feeding Hannah and David.

May 20th - Visiting Great Grandpa’s House

The five kids with their Great Grandparents!

David was asleep during this photo shoot.

May 8th - Visiting a Children’s Museum somewhere in the US

Here is a picture of “daddy” riding a bike on a thin wire at least one story off of the ground!  Fun for him and the kids, scary for mom!

April 29th Visiting Target somewhere in the US.

Our kids enjoy shopping almost as much as mommy does!

June 6th - U.S. Space & Rocket Center, Huntsville, Alabama

There is a funny story here.  As we were traveling, every time we would approach a huge industrial site or power plant, from far away our kids would say “what is that daddy?” We told them (joking of course), that it was a space ship.  They would say, “Really! Wooooowwwww!”  As we got closer we would clear up the “misunderstanding” and explain what it was.  As we were driving through Alabama, our kids saw the peak of the rocket ship and asked “what is that daddy?”  This time it really was a “space ship”! The US Space and Rocket Center is the official home of “Space Camp”.  We had a fun and educational time as we got to explore the museum and the interactive children’s area.  There were even some rides outside that took you from 0 to I don’t know how fast in just a few seconds!  It was very, very hot so we stayed in the air conditioned buildings most of the day.  At the visitor’s center, we checked out a backpack that the kids got to carry around with them all day.  Inside the backpack it had experiments the kid’s could do and an easy to follow guidebook just for kids that got them to look for answers to questions. We did not have time to stay as long as we wanted, but the few hours we were there, were a lot of fun!  If you want an educational experience for your kids, be sure to put this one on the map of places to visit. 

Check out the official site here: Space Camp

Japheth rock climbing at the Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

Even daddy decided to join the rock climbing fun!

May 31th, Playing football at a rest area somewhere in Texas

Rest area in Texas where we stopped to play catch with our kids.  Japheth is getting good at throwing the football!

Welcome to Texas!  We did NOT stop at this park.  Well, we stopped, told the kids we were going to get out and play… just until we saw the signs posted everywhere that said “Watch Out for Snakes”!  Reverse culture shock.  We had just crossed the border from Mexico and into the states and our kids really wanted to get out and play…. they settled for a snake free rest stop instead!

4th of July in San Marcos, California

This was our kids FIRST real 4th of July.  Living in Mexico, we always have a 4th of July get together where we invite other Americans or close friends to our house for an American style barbecue.  Our kids had a vague concept of the 4th of July but I think they get what Patriotism is about now!  We went to a local park and saw probably the best fireworks display I have ever seen.  It was incredible!  The kids enjoyed a day of just hanging out at the park with mom, dad, grandpa and grandma.  One of the highlights was that we were sitting next to a Mexican family that was grilling some carnes asadas… we made friends with them and they offered some of their delicious tacos, home made salsa, home made beans and rice, and of course some chiles to us!

Grandma reading to kids!

July 2nd, Park in Oceanside

July 1st, USS Midway Museum

May 16th, Disneyland Park (Anaheim)

July 3th San Diego County Fair

April 17th, Sea World San Diego

Sea World