August 20th – 21st • Fun With The Cousins
We knew that we wanted to take our nephews out for an adventure. Kevin isn’t much of a planner but he did plan this time. He booked a boat for the day at Lake Elsinore the day before, so we headed out early to pick up the boys from my brother’s house, then took the 2-hour drive to Lake Elsinore. We arrived at the dock and couldn’t believe how green the lake looked. We asked the owner of the boat if the lake was all green like that before we got loaded in the boat and headed out. He assured us that the lake was clear in the middle and we would have a blast pulling tubes around and water skiing with the kids. All loaded and ready to go we headed out to the lake and ripped around only to find out that the lake was not Lake Elsinore but Lake Smellsinore. There was no way we would be going in that water and getting the itch to ruin everyone’s week. We brought the boat back to the dock and waited for the owner to return. He really wasn’t surprised we didn’t want to stay, meaning he pretty much knew the lake was disgusting and just wanted to see if we would keep his boat. We proceeded to load the kids back in the truck to figure out what adventure we would be doing now.
This just proves Kevin’s point that planning is for chumps. While we were driving back towards Costa Mesa we looked up things we could take the kids to do last minute. We found go karting, laser tag, paintball and waterparks, but, with Covid a bunch of these places need reservation with a group our size. The only place we could go without reservation was the Knott’s Berry Farm – Soak City. The good thing is since we were up so early we got to the waterpark right after it opened and got to stay pretty much till it was closed. The only bummer was a lot of the rides John was too short for. We did keep trying to take them down the big slides and sometimes the attendants would let him ride, we also spent a lot of time in the medic tent, Zachariah got a cut on his foot, Lita got a cut on her foot, and John got a splinter in his hand. Since the little kids couldn’t ride all the big rides I took them for a bit so the older kids and Kevin could do the bigger slides. At the end of the day Joesph and Noah were so awesome and watched Lita and John so I could go down the slides too. Even though we didn’t plan this it ended up turning out to be a perfect day with lots of fun with all the kids.
The next day we had plans to go to Kaylani’s (my cousin Dani’s daughter) surprise birthday party. She didn’t know that Lita would be coming and it was so awesome seeing how excited she was that Lita was there for her birthday. We spent the day with our family celebrating Kaylani’s birthday. The whole family showed up for this celebration and Dani did such an awesome job making it fun for everyone. They had the neighbor who has a food truck setup a taco bar, so the food was awesome. It is such a blessing to be able to not only spend time with family but, also to be here for this big life events. Being able to be at Kaylani’s surprise party is something that Lita and Kaylani will cherish forever.
After the party, Lita got invited over for her first ever sleepover and was able to stay at Kaylani’s house for the night. The older boys headed to my brothers house and we took John back to the hotel to catch up on sleep. Lita and Kaylani got to spend the night watching princess movies and then woke up to some private time in the jumpy castle. It was such a sweet experince for both girls and they are so blessed to able to spend this time togther. As I close this blog today I’m so thankful for all the family time and conncetions our children have made with cousins. These are the memories they will remember forever. I cherish every moment like this and reminded why we made the steps to hit the road in the first place.
