Home and Tan

Well, I wanted to again thank you for your prayers. We had a wonderful trip with no hitches. Seriously we could not have asked for a smoother vacation. I really want to tell you all about it and share my pictures with you, but there is so much to tell and oh, around 400 hundred pictures to wade through, that I am not sure where to begin. However, since we have been back (the boys and I got home Friday evening), we've just been unburying a bit. You know how it goes... laundry, no food in the house, piles of mail, phone calls to retun, overflowing inbox where most items need actions, jet lag, etc... It's like being welcomed home to a smack in the face. OK, that might be a little dramatric - it really is good to be home. It just takes a few days to get back to normal.

According to my parents, the boys did an amazing job while they were with them. Apparently, they both entered a growth spurt as they ate constantly. And I could tell. Man, when I picked them up, they were huge! AJ went from my baby to a little boy with a new tooth. And Andrew, well, I have been with him for three days now and I am still adjusting to how big he seems to have gotten while I was gone. And it's not totally my imagination... my mom took the boys shoe shopping during the week and Andrew jumped 1.5 shoe sizes this summer. Yikes!

Ok - I want to give you a recap to our California trip, even though a recap won't do it justice. It really won't. But here goes.

• Monday & Tuesday – I drove the boys down to my parents to get them set up in a routine there and give my dad a little “Dykstra Boys 101”.
  
• Wednesday – I drove to Detroit and met Marc and the Sischos before heading to the airport. We arrived in LA and drove to Ventura (home base for next 4 days).
  
• Thursday – Santa Barbara. We rented mini cars to zip around the town and spent some time at Sterns Wharf. The guys went kayaking, while us girls did a lot of window shopping. We drove back the long way around Ojai and Ventura seeing a bit of the area where Ryan grew up.
  
• Friday – We did the tourist thing and hit Hollywood. See saw the famous sign, hit Rodeo Drive, Beverly Hills, Sunset Blvd, Santa Monica Blvd, the Walk of Stars (Jamie Foxx got his star while we were there), Kodak Theater, Knottsberry Farm, and we finished the evening off with dinner at Medieval Times.
  
• Saturday – The guys took a charter-fishing trip out into the Pacific, while us girls had a down day. We laid by the pool, got Mexican for lunch and finished with a facial. The Sischo’s visited with some family that evening, so Marc and I hung back, relaxed a bit and got us all caught up on laundry.
  
• Sunday – We took the whole day to drive about 5 hours north to San Jose. We took the Pacific Coast Highway. The PCH is an amazing drive! We stopped several times just to get out and breath it all in. Our God is an artist!
  
• Monday – We travel another hour north to San Francisco. We drove the Golden Gate Bridge, saw Alcatraz, Lombard Street, and the harbor. We rented these standing scooters to zip around the city with. I had a little accident with mine (the scooter was faulty, I swear). We headed back to San Jose for the evening. Walked the city, ate dinner, generally enjoyed the nightlife a bit.
  
• Tuesday – We got up at our leisure and drove about halfway back to LA to the Danish town, Solvang. We walked the town, did a little wine tasting, had dinner, window shopped, etc… We then actually hung out at the pool in the evening before hitting this really fun restaurant for dinner.
  
• Wednesday – We packed up in the morning and drove the rest of the way back to LAX for our flight back. We arrived back in Detroit around 12:30 in the morning and by the time we got out hotel; it was 2:30 in the morning, Thursday.
  
• Thursday – I got up, and left before any of my travel mates were up and headed down to Ohio to get my boys. It was SO nice to see them! Andrew was happy to see me, but was ready to get back to playing quickly. AJ on the other hand, did not let go of me for a quite a while (and I didn’t mind one bit).
  
• Friday – we drove the four hours back up home so Daddy could finally see his boys.

I feel like this list doesn't do our trip justice. There were amazing places we ate, funny stories to share, etc... But I least you have an idea of what went on the weeks you are praying. Thanks again. Hopefully, I will have pictures soon. Well, I already have them, but I need to weed through them and put them in a form where someone that didn't take the vacation might actually enjoy them and not be bored to death of yet another picture of the PCH.