For the fourth of July we decided it was time to take our first family vacation. Most of David's aunts live south of LA which is about 6 hours from where we live so we thought that an adventure to the beach would be perfect. We left Thursday afternoon and with gas prices being so high we packed all of our beach stuff, a pack-n-play, 2 suitcases & 5 people into our Nissan Sentra (it gets like 35 to 40 mpg... the Chrylser gets 20). It was a tight fit but napless girls mixed with a little Benydrel and they slept for 3 of the 6 hour drive. The drive was pretty good actually- ugly, but nice. We saw a huge windmill farm with easily thousands of huge windmills which the girls thought were cool. We should have known that his wasn't going to be any ordinary trip when our first portion was spent in a traffic jam as we left Phoenix. When we got to LA traffic was okay but we got lost on the way to the hotel because the map quest directions were all messed up, they dind't say to turn left or right on the off ramp, we had a 50% chance, and of course chose wrong. Drove a few miles the wrong way and then David's aunt's directed back the other way. Two of our sweet Aunts (twins) were waiting at our hotel FOREVER for us to get there but we finally arrived after 7 & were greeted by Maureen & Colleen in our hotel room. They had food for us & matching shirts for the 4th and fun stuff for the kids. It was so exciting to meet them. They look just like David's dad & they act like him too. We were determined to go to the beach that night so although it was way later than we had planned (we were going to watch the sun set) we set off for McDonalds & then to the beach. One of our aunt's (Aunt Patty) had drawn a map for us with the beach only 10 min away but we left it at the hotel so we tried to find it ourselves. BAD idea!!! We drove for what seemed like hours- in some very scary places- like, I had my hand on the pistol when David got out to get directions scary!! We drove some more & stopped to ask again. Finally we found some beach. It was dark & the walk to the water long....so the girls went on our shoulders & off we went to see the beach for the first time. We walked up to the water & it was nasty. There was trash in it & the water was all bubbly & brown (yeah we could see the brown icky stuff in the dark) we kept walking until we saw a homeless guy sleeping under a lifeguard station & some kids coming out zipping up their pants. Great! So we quickly walked back to our car and then set out on our journey to try and find our way home. Which we apparently had wandered far away- David had to call one of his agents to guide us home. Needless to say- we slept really well that night!!Friday we woke up ready for all you can eat breakfast like the website said, only to find out they didn't have one so we ate out of a grocery sack and headed to the beach. It was foggy & little chilly for us Arizonians..I actually had a jacket on but we made our way to Huntington Beach-state side. Due to it being the fourth it took us forever to find parking. After we finally found one we unpacked the car and trecked down to the beach. The waves freaked the girls out a little but they LOVED the sand. The water was COLD & the sun wasn't out so I didn't get in the water I played in the sand with the girls while Austin played in the waves & screamed like a girl :) 
Daddy came & helped them build their sand castle. Once they were done a gang of sea gulls crashed the party and took over the castle!!
After about 4 hours on the beach (the sun did finally come out) we went to Aunt Patty's house for the fourth of July dinner/firework show. We had a classic barbeque with Uncle Stan manning the grill. We enjoyed sitting around talking & getting to know David's aunts. The girls really took to everyone, but they especially like Uncle Stan. Alyssa started calling him Pa Pa. She would follow him around and ask him to hold her. He came out of his train room after showing them his trains (for the tenth time) and he was holding both of them. I don't know if I've ever seen such a big smile as he had!! After dinner we sat out on the lawn & watched the fireworks show. 
Cousin Joey & his girlfriend Megan had the bed of his truck full of fireworks. Although it is legal to shoot off some fireworks in CA, they have some kind of law where they can't be too loud so although ours were legally bought they were modifying them just a little. Which they stopped doing after the PO PO's came by!! The girls did sparklers & liked the fireworks for about an hour & then they were ready to go but Austin was having a blast lighting fireworks & so we waited for the big finale. The girls passed out before we were out of the driveway.
Satruday we headed off to the beach around 8ish. It was a beautiful sunny day. We went to Seal Beach first. It was a great beach for the kids because the waves were farther away & so the girls got to walk around in the water. We walked to the pier. Alyssa got freaked out because she could see the water through the cracks & Zhara got a splinter in her hand. It was pretty big so we took her to the lifeguard station & one of the lifeguards took her splinter out. To keep her attention away from the splinter David had her read the letters on his CTR ring. After Zhara's sliver surgery we began our search for shells. Zhara found a bucket full of shells- she was so excited. After spending more then an hour there jumped in the car and headed to another beach.
We ended up at Huntington Beach again but we went to the city side this time. As David unpacked the trunk of all our beach stuff, which included a tent to give us shade, 2 HUGE beach bags, a cooler, 4 chairs and sand toys, he set his computer bag to the side of the car so that he could put it back in the trunk once it was empty. The question of the day would be did we remember to put our laptop back in the car? Answer to soon follow.
After setting up our spot David went and rented a boogie board, which we had done on our honey moon and absolutely loved it. We at lunch, slapped on sun screen (which is much easier to do if you don't have sand on your body) and was officially time to play. David & Austin headed to the water to boogie board & the girls & I headed to our spot in the sand. We played in the sand just about all day. The girls were literally rolling in the sand. We all took turns Boogie boarding. I forgot how fun riding the waves is. Sometimes, if you aren't paying attention though, you can find yourself a long way away from your spot on the beach, which happened to Austin. After we realized he was gone we started to look for him, after an hour David said a prayer and was told to walk to the parking lot where our car was parked, which he did. In fact he walked right past our car and even looked at the windows to see if Austin was hanging around it. He kept walking past the car and found himeslf looking into another parking lot wandering why the Lord had sent him there??? He sat on the curb and said another prayer asking again where Austin is and once he was done he was told that Austin was back at the tent so that's where he went, and lo and behold, that's were he was. He had gotten lost while boogie boarding.
With that crisis over we went back to playing. It was my turn to boogie board & I caught this great wave but another wave crashed down on me & sent me face first into the sand when I got out of the water my swimsuit fell down baring all for all to see (I"m laughing as I write this because it was classic). My arm was all tangled in the attachment to the board and my swim suit so I couldn't pull it back up so I grabbed my suit & headed up to David to help me get dressed again. Needless to say that was my end to boarding for the day. At about 1 Alyssa had had enough & feel asleep in my arms & so for the next 2 hours she slept on me until it was time to go. Once we had all had enough we packed up our stuff & went back to the hotel. It wasn't until after we showered that we realized just how crazy burnt we all got. David, being the chubby white guy (as he calls himself) got the worst of it. As we were getting ready I asked David if the laptop was in the car, his eyes got wide & my stomach dropped. "Did we put it back in the car after unloading the beach stuff???" Nope the Goulds (actually Gould) left their 600$ laptop with all 2 years of pictures & videos, birthday letters, David's journal & our verizon wireless card sitting in the parking lot next to our car! Are we the smartest people in the world or what? We drove back down to the beach to see if anyone had turned it in & of course no one had turned it in. So that really sucked. Losing the computer is a pain but losing our memories makes me sick to my stomach. But what can you do? After realizing that we would never find our laptop we went to Aunt Patty's for another barbeque. We ate the fattest pork chops I have ever seen, once again cooked wonderfully by Stan & talked. Although we were tired, it was a tough night with our crazy bad burns...
Sunday was church which started at 9. We got up at 830 and still made it to church by 9. That was a record! It was a nice fast & testimony meeting. We went back to the hotel & packed up the room and went over to Aunt Patty's for brunch. Stan (obviously the cook) made banana pancakes, eggs & sausage. We ate & then went to the beach one last time, not to swim but just to look for some crabs. We drove around down to the lifeguard station just to see if someone had turned the computer in but no, no computer but she did tell us a tide pool to go to. Of course, we took a lot of wrong turns before we ever found it, which is the Gould MO on this trip.
The one we found was at Newport Beach. We hiked down to what we thought was the area we were looking for, only to find out....... you guessed it, it was the wrong way to the tide pools. So, we had to hike up and over and back down to the spot we wanted to go to. Once we were there it was lots of fun and Austin, Zhara and David were able to see crabs, snails, clams and see anename's in the tide pools. It was kind of a scary beach with an obscene amount of people on it so we didn't stay very long. We ate at Aunt Patty's one last time, and then when it was dark and the girls were fully medicated, we hit the road.
It was so wonderful to spend so much time with all of David's aunts. They were very, very nice to us and were fun to be around. They told us to come back anytime so we told them we'd be back next weekend. They all laughed (that nervous laugh where they hope were are kidding).
The drive home was uneventufl, except for David taking the wrong exit (no surpise there) and therefore taking us a much longer time to get home then it shoud have once we got to Phoenix. When we finally did get home (3am) we realized that the door had been left open the entire time we were gone, literally open by about an inch. That would have been just our luck, but thankfully the Lord had decided that maybe we had had enough, for this trip and all our stuff was still here. It was a great family vacation with lots of memories...good & bad :). We loved every minute of it (well almost) especially the amazingly perfect weather and can't wait to go back. I think they could have made this trip into a movie like the National Lampoons vacation movie. The Gould Familiy's California vacation......
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