Thanksgiving in California

I've been wanting to get these pictures posted for over a week now and finally found some time today to do it.  We went down to Dave's parents' house for Thanksgiving this year for about 6 days.  Valley Center (San Diego County) is such a beautiful area.  I am positive we wore Nora out because by the end of the trip she was not her normal cheery self.  It took us a couple of days to get her sleep caught up and back on her schedule, but all-in-all, we had a fun and pleasant trip.  Though, we think we might fly down next time instead of drive 12+ hours with little ones.  That was interesting.  Anyway, here is some of the fun stuff we did...
 

After asking us multiple times every day for the past 4 months if we could go to the beach... Nora finally got to go!

And Stratton loved every minute of it too.

Hopefully she got her sand castle building fix out of the way for a while.  She could have stayed there all night despite the chilly ocean air.

We saw lots of fish at the Sea Life Aquarium.

Nora got to play in all of Auntie Maryvonne's stuffed animals (no, the baby is not one of them).

We got to go see the most beautiful Poinsettia greenhouse.

4 Generations....  Grandma Leona drove down with us, and thank heavens for her as she helped keep Dave awake in the long drive down and back.

Dave hangin' out with Albert at LEGOLAND.

We had to wait a few hours, but Nora finally got to see the Bob the Builder show in 4-D.  Wendy is her favorite character on the show.

Here's Dave and me waiting for some of the rides at LEGOLAND. I think I overdressed a little.

Visited Vegas in LEGO and in real life... Who can do that in one trip?

Who knew our daughter could drive a LEGO car?   Well, sort of...she only made it half way around the track and crashed into a lot of other cars... but they still gave her a license.  Yikes!

Of course I had to take a picture of a LEGO Giraffe.

Nora especially loved hangin' out with her Grandma Whitworth.  They are best buddies.

And this is why Nora loves her Grandma so much... They went on a walk around the grove to find a special hiding place for a tiny size fairy house.

It took some deciding and persuading to finally find the perfect place...

But I think they found it.  Now all the fairies have a place to live when it gets cold.  Nora just ate it up.

"oh Gamma, dis is a big one!"  We ended up taking 4 cases of fresh picked Pomegranates home.

Picking lemons.  Look how efficient she is.

Taking one last evening walk in the grove before we headed out in the morning.  I love this place.