San Jose Vacation - Part 1

At the beginning of August we finally took a "real" family vacation. We decided to drive to San Jose, California to visit my best friend, Lesley, and her family. This was by far the longest trip that we had taken the kids on. We were a little nervous as to how the kids would do. Luckily, our home teacher let us borrow their portable DVD player that had two screens that would allow both kids to be able to watch movies. This was a life saver. It kept Leah well entertained, but Corbin struggled on such a long ride even with the movies. 

We left on a Sunday evening and drove as far as my parents' house. They live only about an hour away. But it was one hour less that we would have to drive with the kids the next day and Leah and Corbin love being able to stay at grandpa and grandma's house. 

We left fairly early Monday morning and started driving across Nevada. About 1/2 hour into our drive, Leah started asking if we were almost there. I could tell that it was going to be a long day already! When we got to Elko, we found a park we've been to before and let the kids get out to play and have some lunch. Our break ended up being almost two hours, but it was much needed for our kids. 

I took this picture as we passed this tree sculpture out in the middle of no where. I've rode past it many times but have never seen it until this time because I've always been asleep, reading, or doing something else. This time Ross made sure to point it out to me as we went by. 

On that first day, we drove as far as Reno. Then we stopped at Ross's cousin's house for the night. Leah was so excited for this because she knew she was going to get to play with Ryan. Her and Ryan are good buddies and play so well when they are together. Kyle and Michelle were great hosts and it was so nice to be able to stay with family for a night.

The next morning we got loaded back up and and headed into California. Needless to say, we were all happy when we finally made it to San Jose Tuesday afternoon.

Hannah celebrated her 5th birthday about a week before we got there. Leah was really excited to be able to give her a birthday present and have some of her left over birthday cake. These two girls were the best of friends the whole time we were there in San Jose.

On Wednesday, we went to a place called Happy Hollow. This is a little park and zoo in San Jose. It has some animals and a bunch of rides and playgrounds for little kids. The first ride we went on was the carousel. Leah LOVES carousel rides.

Corbin was fascinated by this tortoise. It kept doing laps around it's pen and would move right along the fence over and over. He loved watching it for quite a while.

Here a picture of Leah and Hannah checking out the tropical birds.

Leah and Hannah loved jumping from stump to stump in this little pond. They crossed it over and over again. They would have done it even longer if we hadn't made them move on.

After visiting the zoo area, we went to ride some rides. Here's me and the kids on the Frog Hopper. Leah claims she really likes this ride, but it is hard to tell since she was clinging to me through the whole ride.

When it was over, she finally put her hands up into the air.

Next we took the kids to ride this little car ride. Leah was nice enough to let Corbin ride with her. He hadn't ever been on something like this before and I wasn't sure how he'd do if he was alone. But he loved it.

Here they are on the lady bug ride. This time Hannah didn't ride because she knows this ride makes her sick sometimes. Seth was excited to ride it though.

This is all of us loaded onto the dragon train ride. It is the only ride that we could all ride together.

While the older kids went to play on the big playground, I took Corbin over to ride the car ride again. He was so excited and would have rode it as many times as I would have let him.

There was another ride that Ross and I took the older kids on. It was a little roller coaster. Lesley couldn't ride it because she was pregnant. So we took the girls first. Hannah loved it, but Leah was fine to go on it just one time. So the second time we took Hannah and Seth. This was Seth's first time. I thought he would get nervous because it goes fairly fast at times, but he did great and had a fun time.

Unfortunately we didn't make it over to the petting zoo in time. All the farm animals were put away by the time we got over there. Overall it was a pretty fun day. This kind of place is definitely more for the kids, but it was still fun to see them enjoying themselves.

One of my favorite parts of the day was seeing the little animal show. They did a mock game show where they would talk about different animals and then bring them out onto the little stage for everyone to see. Sometimes they even walked the animals through the audience so we could see them closer.

After being at Happy Hollow, we took a little drive through downtown San Jose so Lesley could show us some of the sights. Then we went back to the Price's house for some dinner and to plan our next adventure.