California Vacation Day 1: Tahoe Troubles, Hallelujah Hotel!

Okay, so I know most of you go on huge trips all the time, but for us, this "huge" trip was our first we've ever done. We had to save up for almost a year. Because we don't use credit cards, we had to wait until we made some extra money, enough for the whole trip, to go. Earlier in the year we participated in Disney's "Give a Day, Get a Day" program, in which we decided to make blankets for "Project Linus". Each of us (except for Ryan, because he was too young to participate) earned a free one-day ticket to Disneyland. We saved up our money from then, and were finally able to go on October 13th. 

We drove that night to St. George, where we spent the night at Benj's parents' house. Early the next morning, we headed on to California. WELL. We had just driven past the Utah border (only a 5 minute drive) into Arizona when all of the sudden, our Tahoe's transmission WENT OUT. RIGHT THERE!!! We silently prayed that all it needed was to be topped off with tranny fluid, but when it didn't work, we had to practically coast it back to his parents' house and figure out a back-up plan.

As HUGE luck would have it, his parents let us borrow their brand new pickup truck to use on the trip! We put all our stuff into the back of the pickup, loaded everyone up in the truck, and headed out. Thank goodness for his parents having the extra vehicle (large enough to fit our family of 6), or we'd have had to spend most of our vacation money on a rental car! 2 hours later, we were back on the road.

The drive was a little boring, since it's pretty much desert from St. George to California. We stopped in Baker to see the World's Largest Thermometer. You can't see it too well, but it said it was in the 80's.

I also really wanted to visit Calico Ghost Town, but when we got there we found out it wasn't free. Lol. I didn't know that, since the last time I went with my family, I was 12! Oh, well. Another trip!

I took lots of pictures of the road signs, since I don't get out much at all, especially outside of Utah, and was all giddy that we were headed toward LA. I know. Silly. Lol. Once we got into California, we were actually surprised at how fast we got through traffic- we were able to take the express lane almost all the way to our destination, and incredibly, it was pretty clear. I would've thought even the express lane would've been packed. Lucky us!

As the last time I went to Cali was when I was 12, I don't remember anything about it. So I was a bit disappointed to see smog galore when we drove into California/freeways. The air was horrible, and there was a constant smog/haze in the sky the entire time we were there. I don't know if it's normal or if it's just because of the weather that week, but .... as I was hoping to see SUN for our Vacation... it was a little disappointing.

We finally arrived in Garden Grove/Anaheim at around 4pm California time, so it took us 8 hours to get there. We checked into the Embassy Suites Hotel, a pretty fancy hotel compared to what we usually get when we travel!!! In my opinion, it earned 5 stars. It was incredible all around!

The kids LOVED the glass elevator and would always lay on the floor when it went up or down, lol!

Here are the kids standing outside our hotel room, up on the 11th floor:

Down in the lobby, where they have a huge beautiful courtyard with a waterfall and stream/river with lots of beautiful koi and turtles galore. This is also where they serve their amazing complimentary breakfast buffet each morning.

A view of the rooms from the lobby

This cute lion actually "roared", moved around, and steam came up from the spickets below him. We only saw it happen once while we were there, so we didn't catch a picture of it.

Upon checking in, we received a coupon to Joe's Crab Shack. We had never eaten there before, so even though we all hate seafood (except for Benji), we went so Benji could eat where he wanted. Lol. We had an awesome parking spot at the hotel, so we decided to just walk there.

On the way there: I LOVE palm trees! Reminds me of Hawaii.

The waitress seated us out on their patio and gave Benji a bib...lol

And here's his yummo pile of shrimp and crab!

Ryan wanted to know what dad was eating, so Benji gave him a bit of crab to test- he actually LOVED it!!! We have another seafood lover in the family! :)

Another cool thing about Joe's Crab Shack- they had a fun playground area where the kids could play, which was really nice. We took a few pics of the kids by the decorations

Ryan LOVED it when a song came on (forget which one it was) and all the servers danced around. He was out there dancing with them, but I forgot to get a picture!

One thing we did NOT plan on was all the vendors that hound the tourists!! This nice kid came up to our table and asked if the kids wanted some balloon animals. Being naieve, I thought it was part of Joe's.... until he told me that he worked on tips. :p But by that time, the kids were totally wanting one, so we gave him $2/balloon, which is probably horrible, but we've never done this before so we didn't know what to give him.

Brittany wanted a mermaid:

Ryan & Koby got Sharks, and Jordyn got a sea-turtle. The kid was pretty good at making them. Very fast. He was nice enough to pose for a picture.

All in all, Joe's Crab Shack was a lot of fun, and the food was great! Wish we had one close to home.

The view from our suite! It was so nice, the beds were comfy, all the kids got to sleep in a bed rather than the boys sleeping on the floor (like we usually do), we had a kitchenette included and it was just a great room.

We had a looooong day driving down in the truck (we had to CONSTANTLY make stops so we could get this or that out of the back of the pickup!!), so we went to bed early that night. The kids still didn't know what we were doing the next day....!