The BirthFamilyMoon

So the entire Norton/Hightower clan took a family trip together which doubled as Laurie's Bday and Laurie and Jeff's honeymoon. Hence Jeff dubbed it the BirthFamilyMoon.

Everything kicked off with a beautiful wedding day on the 5th.

From there things got a little crazy... we were supposed to take off for Mexico the next day but because the wedding pushed back our departure date, the airlines were having a hard time figuring out how to get all 15 of us to Cancun. After having our flight delayed several times and several days we finally decided to just go do something as a family. All 15 of us packed into 3 cars and started driving to CA without a plan... no hotel no real destination other than a beach.

Things were pretty squishy! Oh and we had to take potty breaks for me...

We stayed at G&G Pullan's in Vegas for a night and then got back to our adventures.
One car made a pit stop for new tires in Vegas to prevent a blow out on the freeway but we all got to a hotel that was booked shortly before our arrival on Wednesday night.

This is the lobby of The Portofino Hotel. They had lemon lime cucumber water in here that I should have taken a picture of because I was obsessed with it!

When we got there we ate pizza and had pool time and then went to bed in prep of day one on the beach.


The hotel let us borrow bikes to ride to the beach and to the pier. (The hotel was on the water but right in the port so we couldn't actually get in the water without biking to the beach.)

This was the view from our balcony complete with barking seals out on that dock.

We spent Thursday and Friday on the beach. There was football throwing, ultimate frisbee, beach volleyball (which I actually played!), boogie boarding (which I also attempted but was being rocked by the tide), wave playing, sand burials, and of course sun bathing and sunscreening (I of course still got burned.)

I also taught Cassie and Jessica how to hunt for sand crabs. :)


We had dinner at The Cheesecake Factory and Johnny Rockets and dessert at Yogurtland.




Our last day of adventures consisted of a trip to Disneyland/CA Adventure. Chelsie went to their World of Color premier in exchange for free tickets and two guides for us. Guides are Disney employees whose main job is to help you know where t go and then take you to the front of all the lines... it was AWESOME!



And of course we had to see the new World of Color Show... It was pretty dang cool!