California 2011

On Thursday most of my family headed out to California to attend my Grandpa Key's funeral service. We did the typical Key thing and all crammed into each other cars to save on gas and to make it that much more of an adventure. Moss and I drove our car and had Joanna and her two kids in with us.
We were not about to listen to Dora the whole way down so we attempted to try out head phones. They worked for about an hour... haha. But they looked cute anyway!
Brenden did awesome on the ride down. He didn't cry once and he didn't even fall to sleep either which was weird. I thought it was going to be a lot harder. Bentley hit a few rough spots but thats to be expected from a not even one year old. We got to the hotel at about 11 and Brenden was so wired! He was dancing around the room going crazy and so happy to have his cousins around him.
Noticed Moss is the background, his book on tape was he escape from my family this trip.
Everyone kept saying you are going to have a rough night with him because he was so hyper but I knew he would calm right down once I tried to get him to sleep and he did:)Brenden loved to take pictures this trip here is one of me during the craziness of the first night.
Bonnie and here kids stayed in the room with us. It was a lot of fun! Bonnie and I would stay up for about an hour before bed chatting and again in the morning before we got up. I never shared a room with Bonnie when I was old enough to have a conversation so it was fun to have a few night. The only different part was having my husband sleeping next to me asking when the heck I was going to go to bed haha. Here is an awesome picture of Bonnie and two kids haha.
The next morning we headed to my cousins ranch to check it out. It was huge and a lot of fun for the kids which means the adults had fun dealing with happy children. Brenden was a little timid around the horses but like to look at them from a distance.
He really enjoyed getting the cookies to feed the horses.
There was a miniature pony that looked like a stuffed animal. It was really cute and had really fluffy hair haha.
Brenden took the camera again and was snapping photos left and right. He got this picture of the horse.

Just walking around the ranch...

Afterward we headed to the mall to give the family a break from the kids while they made dinner. My dads side of the family is not LDS so that means they don't have a billion kids. They all were so excited to have so many kids running around and thought it was so weird. Here is Brenden riding an escalator for the first time. We rode it like 6 times haha.

Later that night we headed back to Craigs house and did some Karaoke. I busted out a few songs but mostly we all just sat and sang as a group. (Brenden took this picture)
Brenden wanting to sing a few songs too
The next morning was my Grandpa funeral. It was quite the experience because it was at a Catholic Mass. I had never been to one so it was quite different for me. Pretty much everything had been rehearsed so it didn't really feel very heartfelt. Moss liked it because no one was telling him over the podium how they meet there spouse, but I like that stuff it makes me feel comfortable and surrounded my friends that are like me but there it felt kind of distant and sad. But all in all it was a cultural experience that taught me a lot. Keeping Brenden quite was interesting seeing as no one else had a kid there besides our own family. Which is way different than a LDS service that is for sure.
We then headed back to Craigs house for lunch. There were a few decorations up of my Grandpa...My dad went around and snapped some pictures of people.
At this point in the vacation Moss and I took some time for our little family and headed to the beach. I forgot my camera so I had to use my phone camera. Brenden was so excited to go the the "B" as he called it. Moss was excited to swim in the beech and I was excited to watch my boys enjoy it. As we were driving around the mountain Moss and I would get so excited thinking it would be around the next corner. Brenden face would light up everytime we went through one of these...

He kept asking for more "unnels" haha.

We got to the beach and could not wait to get down to the water. Breden was trying to walk as fast as he could but the sand slowed him down a bit haha.
Brenden in the ocean for the first time...My buddy and I
He was so excited about the sand and dug almost the whole time. When we got back and people asked him how the beach was he would start pretending to dig haha.
We found this random bucket and broken shovel and he loved it. Brenden would stand in the water and watch the tide come up, but when it would go down he would watch the water going back into the ocean and loose his balance and fall over. It was so funny!
The whole reason we went to the beach was so Moss could go swimming and try out some techniques he has been writing about in his Trialthon Training book. He was so excited to find out that they worked haha.
The weather was perfect but the water was pretty cold. He kept warm with his wet suit but his feet kept getting cold. One time he went out and came back in really fast yelling at me. I was a bit confused but once he reached me he said "I touched a seal". haha, He said he dove under a wave and hit something with his hand and looked over and saw what looked like a dog with long wiskers. haha. He was so excited!

My boy and I
It was so pretty and peaceful there. (If you look close you can see Moss out there diving.)
Cute...
It was time to head back and I told Brenden he could pick a rock to take home. It worked out well cause he was not sad to leave because he was so excited about his rock. Walking to the car
We saw this sweet lifeguard car and Moss wanted a picture of it...
That night we busted out the Karaoke again. This time Russell Nicole and Timmy and Trini were there to join us.
Brenden loves to play around with his uncle Timmy. Sometimes I thing Brenden thinks he is so so big haha.
That night was a little interesting because most the cousins were playing a drinking game in the back yard and drunks were walking around acting weird but it would not be a Key family vacation without it haha.

It was a really fun trip and Brenden did awesome! It was nice to get away but always nice to come home.