With Thanksgiving coming up, the boys were very excited! And so so silly!

On the 19th, we picked up Gramma! We had to take her to Teakwood’s Tavern for sliders.

Cheers sliders!!

November 20th –

We got tickets for a brand new light display called Illumination AZ. It was a drive through light show with a little shopping at the end. It is fairly cool, but it is an enormous cash grab.

We creep through the windy path full of lights about as fast as the car can go if you put it in drive and don’t step on the gas. So the boys got out of their seats to look out the window. Most other cars had kids standing out of sunroofs or climbing around in truck beds.
Like some act of Murphey’s Law, Brendan stumbled and fell down and caught his g-tube on the console and pulled it right out! We are in the long line of cars in an “absolutely no stopping” zone and I have to find a spot to tuck the car and put his button back in.
His screams could probably be heard for 50 miles. Putting the button in hurts a little, but to Brendan it hurts a LOT. He hates it and lets us know.

Once we got moving again, Brendan sat on Gramma’s lap to look out the window. Trevor got a little jealous, so he climbed up to my lap and took over the driving!

Brendan recovered quickly and we checked out “Santa’s Village” at the end. This giant ornament was a nice photo op!

They claim this is the world’s largest snowman. Or was it nation’s? I don’t remember, I was streaming with adrenaline from the button incident.

Gramma paid the surprise extra fee for the boys to get in to the bouncy house area. They had a blast

Yummmmm.. funnel cake

All that bouncing and excitement!

November 22nd –

The last day of school before Thanksgiving, the school hosted a “Feast of Pies”. We met the boys there and enjoyed pie and then we were released early.

The boys were excited for Gramma to come to their school

We were excited because we were leaving right from school to go on our “Trip-in-a-Trip”. That night we checked in to our hotel in Palm Springs, CA.

November 23nd –

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Our trip-in-a-trip was supposed to be an RV trip to Rocky Point in Mexico. But bad timing with events there (giant motorcycle rallies) plus Bill having to work over the weekend made us change up all of our plans. Bill stayed home and Gramma and I took the boys to California.

In Palm Springs, we checkout out the aerial tramway. It take you 2.5 miles up the mountain in a suspended tram car that rotates around. I couldn’t get a picture of it, so this is from the web.

The view at the top is pretty nice

You can use a telescope to look down on where you just came from

There is hiking and camping on the mountain, and restaurants and stores in the tram station. We walked around a while.

Then it was time for the ride back down.

Gramma bought Brendan a new owl on top of the mountain. He is a special owl now because he rode the aerial tram.

We were going to go check out the swimming pool at the hotel in the afternoon. The boys tried on their new wetsuits.

They were just too cute!

The pool was chilly but the boys didn’t care. The weather was beautiful.

I have always put a life jacket on the boys in the pool because it is so hard to manage them both. Especially having to keep Brendan from submerging his neck. Trevor is getting better at swimming, so he wanted his jacket off.

And look who is really happy to be submerging his neck! He was beyond thrilled that he could be in the pool without being held constantly by an adult.

He loved swimming. Gramma just wanted to get some sun!

Thanksgiving dinner – we ate at a Chinese buffet restaurant. They had so much yummy food and even a roasted turkey on the buffet. It was perfect!

November 24th –
We drove Friday to Costa Mesa, CA. We got there too early to check in, so we stopped by the nearest beach to kill some time. The boys were just in the regular clothes and they were supposed to stay out of the water. hahahahahaha, right.

They found some friends and built a sea wall.

They played and splashed and had a blast until we had to take them, dripping wet with no change of clothes, to our place to check in.

We checked in to a condo from Airbnb. It was a cute little place. We enjoy these stays better than hotels.

The boys found a game of Jenga and used the blocks to build things.

They found garden snails outside on the fences and used the blocks to make Jenga houses for the snails.

November 25th –

I had big plans. I had read and researched beaches all along the California coast. I wanted to take the boys to see real tide pools and see little creatures. We got up in the morning and had breakfast, got all covered in sunscreen and in to wetsuits. We shopped for some beach chairs and toys and extra towels and loaded up the van in bright warm sunshine.

And then we drove in to a cloud!!! As we got closer to the coast, the visibility got worse and worse until we were in fog as thick as pea soup. It dropped to low 60’s and was windy. Gramma was started to feel like she had a fever and was so cold. We had to bail on the beach! We couldn’t see it!

We came back to the condo about 8 miles inshore and it was still sunny so we thought we would check out the pool. The water was ICE. SO COLD. It was supposed to be heated. Good thing the boys had their wetsuits. They would go in to the hot tub and soak until they were nice and warm. Then they would run run run and leap in to the swimming pool. Frantically they would get to the stairs and climb out and then run back to the hot tub to “recharge” their wetsuit with warm water. It was a riot. They got a lot of running in.

November 26th –

These boys love love love the beach and were devastated when we couldn’t go. I promised them that come fog or raining frogs, we would go today. So we found a beach that was real easy to get to from the car and we set up. It was cool and windy and still a tiny bit foggy, but still nice. Poor Gramma was chilled and feeling sick, but she bundled up in a towel and watched the boys play.

We almost had the place to ourselves. There were only a couple other people here and there.

Trevor found a big stick

As soon as the boys broke out some snacks, some new friends showed up.

We worked hard on the new sea fort.

The waves were strong

At least they got their day at the beach. We didn’t get to the tide pools, but there’s always next time. We all love the beach.

November 27th –
On the way home, we absolutely had to stop at Trevor’s favorite road trip stop –
The General George S. Patton Memorial Museum. The tank yard was open this time and the new building was done.

Tuesday, the 28th, we had to put Gramma back on a plane. She probably had a case of the flu and was sick for weeks after that. We all came down with it and got pretty sick for a while. It was certainly a memorable Thanksgiving and a wonderful visit, even if everything went wrong.