Last California Post

Aunt Sarah with the boys at breakfast

Day 3: We went to Hearst Castle on our last day in California.  I thought the boys would like to see a real castle!  We went to Medieval Times for their birthdays, so I played off of that to sell this idea to them.  This castle, though, wasn't exactly what I had in mind.  First, you can't touch anything in it.  Second, the man giving the tour is talking about stuff my kids couldn't care less about.  And third, this was Jacob's observation: Nobody was at the castle.  I think he was expecting a live jousting match or something.  I found the castle to be a little obnoxious because I simply cannot imagine the money spent on it and the things in it.  It seems like a lot of wasteful spending to me, but I'm not a "things" person.  Don't get me wrong, it was beautiful!  But the stories behind all of the items: this was shipped from England; Mr. Hearst was obsessed with .  Everything was hand carved and just really excessive.  I don't know....it was facinating the first few minutes and then it became obnoxious to me.  The drive up to the castle was incredible!  Absolutely gorgeous!  I could've gone my entire life and it would be okay for me to not have spent half of a day there.  But it was definitely something I can't see anytime I want.  It was just one of those kinds of things for me.  

The boys running around the castle acting like bad guys



Silly smiles by one of the pools

   





















    That afternoon, we took the boys for their first trip to the beach!  It was funny because we had to pay for parking in a close lot (a whopping $1).  There were trees planted in the parking lot, and of course sand was all around them.  The boys immediately started playing in the sand.....as if that was the beach!  Cracked me up! 

The Beach!!

Check out our sand castle!



Stomp to destroy the sand castle!

    

     That night, my parents watched the boys so that Brian and I could squeeze in a date night.  We went to this cute little restaurant for dinner.  It was just nice to get away from the kids for an hour or so before the final day of travel. 

     Again, the boys were near perfect on the planes going back to Texas.  It helped a lot to have 4 extra hands on the way back to help with them (my parents took the same flights back with us).  I took off work the day after we returned, and Brian and the boys returned to their normal routines.  Thank goodness!  ha!  It was so nice to have that one day to recoup.....alone. 

     The trip was so much better than I could have imagined!  Before we left, I was beginning to think we were crazy for taking the kids.  In hindsight, I'm so happy we did.  They are such good boys and they were SO easy going the entire trip!  We had one meltdown per day....total.  It was just an amazing trip all around.  :)