More Grateful: California Vacation

Since Blake's dad works in the travel business, Blake and I have been blessed to get to go on several vacations since we've been married. We love traveling and it's something we save up for and make sacrifices in other areas so that we can go. I love just getting to spend all day, every day of the trip with Blake and not having other things like work or school get in the way. After we had Robbie we decided we still wanted to make travel a priority and really wanted him to be a part of our vacation because we knew it'd be hard to leave him.

We planned a trip to California during the hard winter months - it was something to keep us excited and looking forward to when Blake would graduate from school and also be done with busy season at work. We had gone to Huntington Beach last year and loved it and so we decided to try Newport Beach, but this time we were going to make it a road trip. I grew up only having been on an airplane a couple times, when we went on vacations we always drove. Blake on the other hand because of his dad's business, flew everywhere. So this was new to Blake and was his longest road trip by far.

I knew things would be different traveling with an 8 month old, but I didn't quite realize HOW different it would be. Even just packing for a little person for a week takes so much more planning than it does for two adults. So just getting on the road felt like I had already accomplished a feat. Robbie did great for the most part in the car and so we were really lucky. We stopped in St. George and stayed with Blake's grandparents so they could meet Robbie. They were so sweet with him and Robbie just loved them! The first night we were there I think Blake and I both realized we weren't going to be having a very relaxing vacation like we were used to in the past. Robbie has gotten very used to having his own room (and so have we:)) so having him in our room again was definitely a challenge. None of us slept very well- mostly because we were worried whenever he would make a noise that he'd wake Blake's grandparents. That same worry continued when we got to our hotel in California since there were people above us, below us and to both sides of us. Everything revolved around Robbie's nap schedules and bedtime- so at first it was a little discouraging when we couldn't fit in the things we wanted to do.

After a day in California we both kind of reached a point where we realized things were different, but it was okay. We were still on a fun vacation and we were together as a family and so we were going to make the best of it and have an enjoyable time. After that we had a lot more fun- going on walks on a trail by the hotel (which Robbie loved), playing shuffleboard, sitting by the pool, walking on the beach, and reading in the room while Robbie napped. It wasn't the exact same as our other trips, and that was okay. Our vacation revolved around an 8 month old and we loved it:) I realized why I loved going on vacations in the past was because I got to just spend all my time with Blake and that hadn't changed- I now got to spend all my time with my two favorite boys who I'm very grateful for!! I'm grateful for a little boy that is teaching me so many lessons! Here's some pictures from the trip.