And we danced....

Evelyn had quite the 4th of July wardrobe. This was one dress.

We became known as the "party van". The first day we were there Adam moved his car seat into our car and there it stayed for the week.  There were rumors that Chris would throw back candy and even money!  And of course bonus--DVD player.  We watched several Ninjago Movies.  When Carter arrived he also wanted to be part of the party van!
Chris told them to do a silly picture and Evelyn copied Carter.
The house had a trampoline and all the kids LOVED it!

The kids also loved playing the I-PAD. 

Thursday and Friday late afternoonish we headed back to the beach for a couple of hours.  My kids absolutely loved the beach. 





Aunt Cassi made the girls into mermaids and they loved it!

Then they decided to bury Aunt Sarah.
This little girl had sand everywhere and loved every bit of it!

Friday we headed to the San Diego Zoo. The girls were so excited to see all the different animals. We started by doing a bus tour of the entire zoo, which was so nice because we got to see the majority of the animals.  This zoo is huge.  After we finished the tour we headed to see the monkeys and gorillas.  We also waited in a long line to see adorable panda bears.  We ended our day by riding the "tram ride" across the park.  The girls loved it!  It was the hottest day and we had enough by about 3p.m.  I think the girls could have stayed longer but I was spent. 

My kids were very excited for Thursday as it was Cousins Camp. This is a tradition of Chris' mom that my kids absolutely love. They missed last year's cousins camp so they were especially excited for this.  An added bonus was that Evelyn got to attend too, so I had no kids!  The brothers and Sarah all went golfing at about 5:45 a.m.  Cassi, Courtney, Little Jacob and Annie went to Oceanside and walked down the pier and ate a delicious cinnamon roll from Ruby's diner.  The kids were very anxious for all the adults to be gone.  Grandpa Mike also went to Cousin's Camp this year to help out Grandma Dottie.  The theme was pioneers and she made all the girls skirts, aprons and got them bonnets.   They learned some Orme family pioneer stories, built log cabins, played games, wrote in journals...they all loved it!  When the adults returned we went to the Mormon Battalion museum.  We enjoyed a picnic and everyone enjoyed the museum.  The kids got to pan for gold, which they thought was really cool.










Grandma even made "flapjacks" for breakfast!





They also made yarn dolls--which they continued to do throughout the week and use all of Grandma's yarn!

Wednesday morning we headed to SeaWorld.  Madison was a expecting more rides, but she still really ended up enjoying the park.  It actually had more rides than I remembered--of course it's been about 15 years since I've been! 





We're making our fish faces!
The girls got pretty wet on the raft ride...
The girls wanted a photo shoot on this turtle!  I finally had to put an end to it!

















We got there just after opening at 9 a.m. and stayed until 9 p.m.  Chris and Nick were done!  Cassi and I were up for staying a little longer!  Everyone else had left earlier.  Madison's favorite show was the Seal/Sea Lion show.  Claire's favorite show was the Cirque de la Mer show.  It was such a fun day.  Evelyn did great and enjoyed the shows as well.  They also loved seeing the penguins and polar bears!  Claire really wanted to go back and see them again before leaving--even though they were the last thing we had done!