California 2015

We headed down to California in April of this year for Emma's cheer meet. We decided to take some vacation time either side of her comp and catch up with Mark, Lisa and the kids and do some touristy things too. I will do a separate Disneyland post - but here are a few other things we did in Cali this trip. 

Beach, Beach and more Beach. A natural thing to do when you're from Australia and Live in Utah. We miss the beach so much - so any chance to go - we take it. It was super windy on a few of the beach visits but that didn't stop the kids at all - they were all in and swimming without a care in the world. They really liked building sand castles with their cousins too! 

Griffith Observatory, The Hollywood Sign & Griffith Park. This was actually super cool. The kids were excited to see the iconic hollywood sign and you actually had a great view from the Griffith Obsevatory car park. Inside the observatory the kids had a blast running around and looking at all the displays and even finding out their weights on each of the planets. We finished off the day with ice-cream and a play at Griffith Park. 

 Warner Bro's Studio Tour - This was one of my absolute favourite things we did! As you know - Emma and I (especially me) are HUGE Gilmore Girls fans! We have watched every episode of all seven seasons multiple times and frequently quote it! The studio tour let us go to all the outside sets like Luke's Diner, Miss Patty's, The church and the school. We also saw sets from friends (Emma's all time favorite show - we even sat on the couch at Central Perk), Pretty Little Lairs, Harry Potter and Batman. We also visited the Ellen set and I got to walk on the stage and sit in Twitch's seat! SOOOO exciting! This was seriously the coolest tour I've ever done and would recommend it to anyone going to LA. 

Sea World. I was pretty terrible this day and barely took any photos. We were so busy rushing from show to show and then fitting in rides in between that I kept forgetting to get my camera out. Sea World was SO fun though. An unforgettable moment was during the Shamu show when the Paul, myself and the twins got an absolute soaking from Shamu and the twins started screaming! It was pretty funny because Emma and Hayden had sat in the 'Soak Zone' hoping to get super wet. Paul and I took the girls further up the audience to avoid being drenched. We failed at that task. Although by the end of it the older kids did end up WAY wetter than us! 

California has so much to do and see that I really want to go back again and do a bunch of other tourist type activities that we didn't do last time. We want to do Lego Land and Knottsberry Farm amongst others : ) Lucky we will be back again next April!