Before we head down to Orange County yet again in less than a week (these girls are spoiled!!), I need to get the remaining pictures on here from our Easter trip. We had an amazing time, and while the girls may be spoiled by their Mop and Pop time, I'm also pretty spoiled down there. For this Easter trip, I was alone with the girls for a few days while Matt's baseball team played in a tournament in San Luis Obispo. Normally, I would be terrified of multiple days alone with all of the kids (yes, did I mention how spoiled I am? Obviously, Matt rarely travels for work so I'm not often exposed to this horror), but Mop actually met us in San Luis Obispo to help me with the rest of the drive (and with the girls!). Having her in the van with me to crawl in the back and break out the potty, fetch dropped lovies and reload the DVD player made the trip way faster and more enjoyable!! Of course, having Mop's and Pop's help once we arrived was appreciated, too!!
Before we left San Luis Obispo, we loaded up on hamburgers and hotdogs and the girls burned some energy on the outdoor deck of the burger joint.
Our first activity, once we were settled the next day, was hitting up Pretend City in Irvine, a children's museum that looks like a little town, complete with street signs, little cars for the kids to drive, stores, a fire station, a post office, a construction zone, a restaurant, a little house, and an arts and crafts area. The kids could "work" in all of the different locations to earn pretend money, and even stamped their time cards at each job. They had a blast!!
Megan and Bridget are working at the grocery store here,
and Annie (left) and Tessa are driving their little car.
The house under construction kept Bridget and the twins busy for a while,
and all of the girls made themselves at home in the completed house.
We all had a great time until we were walking out. We were under the impression that there would be an area for the kids to buy little trinkets with their pretend money, and that turned out not to be the case. Instead, we were herded right through an overpriced gift shop, where the girls each wanted to pick out something to buy with their money. Pretend City quickly became Tantrum City as we had to forcibly remove four crying, cranky kids.
Luckily, the crankiness didn't last too long, and the girls were pretty well-behaved the rest of the trip. Everything is fun at Mop and Pop's house, from the "fort" at the top of the stairs that Megan and Bridget sleep in, to feeding Charlie ice through his dog run gate, over and over again. Even the barstools in the kitchen are neato :)
Playing dress-up still ranks pretty high on the to-do list for the girls. They love to raid Mop's closet for all of her fancy shirts (that become dresses on little people), jewelry and shoes, and then put on a fashion show.
Bridget's even sporting some extrta hair here, courtesy of a fake ponytail in Mop's fun stash :)
As always, we managed to squeeze in some swimming, despite less than ideal weather conditions. It rained every day we were there, but the sun came out briefly one morning, and Tessa and Megan proved that they are definitely the water babies in our family. Unheated pool water does not bother them in the least!
Annie was much more comfortable in Pop's arms later that night :)
With my downtime, I even managed to get a photo of me pregnant! Here I am at 27 weeks:
The fun always has to come to an end, and on our last morning, the girls busied themselves playing with the old Fisher-Price toys. Annie surprised me with a little imaginative play I overheard that morning. She's talking so much now that she has little play talk between people, princesses, and even her own fingers. She has a lot to say, and can't be bothered to find a sister to share it with.
In the final stages of packing the car, we resorted to a Diego episode to keep these two occupied.
The drive home wasn't as traumatic as it's been in the past. We even scoped out a little playground and had a picnic lunch to break up the drive. Not a bad trip when you can look into the back of the van and see kids either smiling or snoring!
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