April – Family Vacation – Cheer Competition & Birthday Pool Party

One of the reasons we decided to do a family vacation in California was because Amanda had a cheer competition this weekend.  On Sunday, most of the girls headed over to the competition to watch Amanda Cheer.  They did an excellent job and came in 4^th place overall… of course all weekend in the pool Amanda and Abby practiced cheer moves with the other girls.  

Amanda - Our little cheerleader

Amanda's Cheer team

Amanda was super-excited to see Abby in the crowd..!

The girls enjoying the competition... 

Kim & Amanda after the competition

Afterwards, Kim and I took a walk to the park to pick up the tickets for the entire family.   Before heading to California I came up with the idea to buy Disney gift cards from Safeway since you could get 4 times the points on gas so everyone decided to follow suit.  In the end we saved a lot of money on gas and it made it really easy to buy everyone’s tickets with their gift cards. 

Since Aliya and I were both celebrating our birthday in California we decided to have a pool party on Sunday before the craziness of the week began.  My cousin Dawn came out with her family for a couple days so they joined us at the pool.  I often celebrated my birthday on vacation growing up since it always fell on Spring Break so it was a lot of fun to share this special memory with Aliya.  

Aliya with her gift from the condo staff.. Happy 7th Birthday..!

Matthew's favorite part of the whole trip was hanging out with the kids in the pool.  This was the first time in almost 4 years since has been able to go in a pool or enjoy being in water and not having to endure extreme pain.  All of the kids constantly swarmed around him and begged to be tossed into the air with this good arm.

James doing tricks... Shane spotting him from behind.. or pushing..!

Cuddling with my man... 

 We decided to make things easy and barbeque hot dogs and polish sausages to eat with chips and dip and of course some cake in the evening.  We sent Jimmy and Matthew to do the grocery shopping for the party and the beginning of the week.  Of course, they also got to do the cooking :)

The girl's table - Yummy food and good company

The boys table... Shane made Parker feel comfortable with the guys..!

The adult table - We had so much fun visiting..!

The ladies - Just missing Maria..!

Matthew and I relaxing by the pool... 

Shane enjoyed relaxing at the hot tub with the other guys..!

We tried to get the kids to bed somewhat early since the next day we were going to have a long day at Disneyland.  It was tough since everyone was so excited to be together to visit and the kids loved having their cousins around for the day.  Of course we had to take a traditional picture of all of the children lined up in order by age.  We used to do this growing up whenever we saw our cousins.  

The whole gang - Shane was the oldest

Relaxing with a movie... 

Celebrating our Birthday together..!

Of course, after everyone else went to bed, Matthew and I took a romantic stroll to the roof of the condo where we could watch the Disneyland firework show.  It was a great evening and a lot of fun to spend just a couple minutes alone with Matthew.