New Years!

I had been looking forward to this week for a long time. It was so great to have my family in town - to spend the week together and enjoy some of our favorite places in California. Goodness, we have missed our families so much over the past 4 years and I'm just so thankful for times like these!

We started off our trip with a few days in San Diego.

our first stop was the beach at Coronado

as you can see, little man loves his Uncle "Weeeeul"

The next day we ventured out to the Wild Animal Park. If you ever go to San Diego, this is a must-see. The park is so huge and is designed to make you feel like you are really in Africa!

This was a special little treat - they accidentally overbooked our safari, so the manager of the park offered to take us on our own private tour! 

Mimi so graciously offered to sit with this squirmy guy during the safari. 

He is quite a hand full these days :)

I loved finally being able to introduce Hannah to Will and Caity.
It is so fun to think about Hannah and Hattie being sweet friends. 

I can't wait to see these two as parents!

Later on in the week we went to the Reagan presidential library, which was awesome and another check off the Cali bucket list!

We toured Air Force One and it was so interesting!

the view of the valley from the museum - breathtaking!

The most entertaining part of the whole trip was Will convincing Dad to wear skinny jeans for the day. I about lost it when I first saw him!

Then it was Rose Parade time, one of our favorite days of the whole year!

The theme for this year was...

the kids loved seeing something so familiar and the cat in the hat float was amazing!

This was my favorite float of the year -  look how detailed the owls were! And it just so happened to be the nurses' float :)

Hannah's first Rose Parade - sweet girl was out the whole time :)

TJ float!

donuts - our rose parade tradition

here is Harris last year enjoying his first of many donuts :)

We love penguins at our house, so this float was one of the kids' favorites. Our most read books right now are the Tacky the Penguin series and Sergio. 

Harris about died when he saw the tractor float. So awesome!

the boys got a steal on some Rose Bowl tickets

This (may) be my family's last trip to visit us.
It's hard to believe how fast these past 4 years have gone by!