The Mickelsons: California: The beach (Part 1).

September 13-21 2013

Five years later (seriously) I am finally getting to blog about our wonderful week long vacation in Newport Beach, California with my mom's side of the family.

It was quite the gathering process with pictures and all but I'm sure glad I waited because there are some really good ones.

(Thank you to my Aunties Hilary and Annabelle for some of these pictures.)

Before I get to the the actual beach post I just wanted to quickly document our pre beach preparation.

First, my mom and I got spray tans. (I can not believe I had to do that but when I say I was white I am not lying. Living in Oregon has not been good for my coloring.) Let's just say that was probably the funniest, most awkward, interesting experience of my life. Apparently you are supposed to put your feet in certain places and then move them to other places when the recording tells you to so that you get an even tan. I should not admit this over the blog but I just want to remember that I really did not get that. I had taken off my rings (which help me keep track of which hand is my left and which is the right) I know, I know... you can make fun of me, but seriously it's hard. Anyway, I got confused and ended up just spinning around constantly hoping that it would go on evenly ha. And if you know what it's like to get a spray tan you know I did it completely wrong! Anyway, thankfully it looked pretty good and we were off to get our pedicures and manicures.

My cute grandpa came and joined in on the fun.

And Olivia thought it was the funnest thing ever.

And now for the beach part.

There are not words to even begin to describe the pure bliss of this trip.

Although there was an interesting thing that happened which I'll get to in a second.

So, we left late Friday (the 13th) so that we can drive to Mesquite, Nevada and spend the night. We always stay in that same hotel.

In the morning after a quick breakfast we drive the remaining 6 hours or so to Newport.

And that's when the real fun begins.

Mostly we just sit on the beach all day.

Rubbing our feet in the soft sand while talking endlessly, catching some nice waves on our boogie boards, building sand castles, catching baby crabs, and just soaking in that fresh beach smell while looking out at the endless ocean.

At nights each family takes a turn to make dinner.

We mostly keep it simple with burritos, spaghetti, pizza, lasagna, salads, and fruit.

We like to leave room for our Tutti Frutti runs later in the evenings.

If you are a faithful reader of my blog you know that there is not a better frozen yogurt place on Earth.

For breakfast we eat at least 1 donut (usually more) from Seaside donuts.

The best little donut shop around. It can be found right down the street.

We occasionally go shopping down the boardwalk.

We all scored a little something cute to wear this year.

Olivia can not get enough of crab catching and playing in the sand.

Let's just say that shower time was super fun:)

Clara enjoyed the peacefulness of the beach just as much as the rest of us and spent most of her time sleeping.

Now for the not so blissful part.

I don't want to focus on the negative so I'll just let it be heard for the memories.

The first night we were there I was woken up at 2:00 am by my parents who were lifting my sheets up and down looking for bed bugs.

Apparently they had gone to bed earlier and got woken up to bed bugs literally crawling all over them.

And this is no exaggeration.

Their bed was infested.

Luckily there were none found in mine or the other rooms.

So my parents moved out to the living room with the 3 littles and Olivia, and slept on mattresses.

That's where they remained because we did not want to leave the beach house.

The lady (Jackie) had a couple other beach houses available but they weren't on the beach.

So we figured that we would try to forget about the fact that we were living with tiny shelled bugs that wanted to eat our blood and try to enjoy our vacation.

We knew it would be quite the process to debug upon arriving back home anyway.

To make a long story with lots of drama short, Jackie is a butt (that's the nicest word I can think of to call her that is blog appropriate), we all spent countless hours literally stripping down on our doorsteps and taking all things to laundromats to heat them up to hopefully kill the bugs.

Ovens were bought to put things in and dogs were hired to come sniff our houses for any sign of the bugs.

Luckily so far our homes are free of them except for a large amount were found in Olivia's port a crib that she was sleeping in.

Which would explain her 15 or so bites on her face. (Pictures in a future post.)

My dad was bit around 75 times.

But everyone has healed nicely thank goodness.

That being said, we are all bug free but for sure hate Jackie.

Possible legal action may be taking place so we'll see on that.

Of course my future lawyer husband has been all over that. :)

Before this trip I always thought that expression of "don't let the bed bugs bite" to be cute and funny (not for real), but those bed bugs are serious business. And in the future when I use that expression I literally mean don't let the bed bugs bite because they are real and they are not nice.

Now for the fun part.

The pictures.

They say a picture says 1000 words so here you go!