Our Trip to Carlsbad, CA: Day 1

Two weeks ago today, we left on an awesome vacation! We went to Carlsbad, California (which is about 30 minutes north of San Diego). My parents have some friends that own a condo down there that is only one block from the beach, so they let us rent it for a week. When I say "us", I mean my entire family...my parents, Ashlee & Greg's family, Kristin & Dan, and us were all able to go on this vacation together! It was great, full of tons of relaxation! It was so fun, in fact, that I've decided that I have to break the vacation down by day...otherwise, I think it would be too overwhelming to write about & it would be overwhelming to read, plus don't even talk about the picture overload! I have over 400 pictures from this trip, and about 75% of them are worth posting. So, without further delay, here's Day One of our family vacation...

On the first day of our vacation, we drove to Mesquite, NV. We thought, since both Ashlee's family & our family have babies, that it would be best to split the drive into two days. We stayed at the Falcon Ridge Hotel. I was very impressed with it. It was nice, clean & DID NOT have a casino! Since when does Nevada have hotels WITHOUT casinos? This made it more of a family-friendly environment, plus you didn't have to smell like cigarette smoke just by walking through your hotel. It had a really great pool area that we spent several hours at. Remember the itsy bitsy teeny weeny pink ruffled bikini I talked about in Vivvie's last letter? Well, here it is...


Is that not the cutest thing you've ever seen in your entire life?!? Now I can check that off my I've-Finally-Had-a-Daughter Bucket List...


Here's everyone in the pool. It was a small pool, but just right for the little kids. And, the little squirting water feature in the back was fun to play in...

Cohen was a little unsure of the water at first. He finally felt comfortable when had had both a life jacket & Viv's raft...

Eventually, he gave the raft back to V so she could have a turn in the pool as well. Got to love the look on her face. I think she's thinking, why is this bathtub so cold?

After awhile, Vivvie got out of the pool & spent some cuddle time with Nana...

And then, drifted off to sleep on a bed of pool towels that Nana made for her. Can you say "Diva"?

While Viv was sleeping, Mike & I played in the water with the boys and then spent some time in the hot tub too...

I didn't think I'd want to get in the hot tub because it was 107 degrees that day in Mesquite, but it actually felt pretty good right after getting out of the pool.

That night, we got some dinner and then headed over to The Casablanca Resort to check out all their cool waterfalls...

The boys really liked them...

We even hiked up to the top of the waterfalls. Not sure if you're supposed to do that or not, but we did it anyway.

Then it was back to the hotel to get some sleep before our next day of driving. When we got back to our hotel, it was 10:00 at night & the temperature was still 99 degrees. Not exactly perfect sleeping weather. Thank goodness for AC! --Lindsay