Behind the Scenes

    Wow, a whole year to the day, since my last post....how pathetic!  Here is to hoping I can do a little better.  A friend recently told me she publishes her blog posts into a book every couple of years so it can serve as a journal, documenting her life and the life of her family.  I think that is a brilliant idea so if I can keep that end goal in mind perhaps I can stick with it. 
   To start things off, my family and I have just returned from a wonderfully LONG vacation where many memories were made, to which I hope to document here.
   Cameron and I have decided that half of his PTO each year will be spent traveling to visit and visiting family but we alternate families every year.  This year happened to be our year to visit my family in Pennsylvania.  In doing some simple calculations and pricing flights we decided it would make more sense to fly my parents and younger sister out to visit us.  It would save us the cost of one plane ticket and we would have all of our comforts, baby gear, car, etc.  So that is what we did!  My mother and sister flew out in June  and my dad is coming to visit next week, since he was not able to get away with my mom and sister.  Because we did not travel to see family, Cameron had all of this "extra" PTO so I began planning a way in which to use it. 
   Living life on the east coast, I have never been to California.  I know, call me crazy!  Visiting California, laying on the beach, driving up Highway 1, eating out, sight seeing, and being with family sounded like the perfect vacation to me so by golly we were going to make it happen.  Once we decided, things fell right into place.
   Cambri does not start kindergarten until next year so we had no school schedules to work around and could avoid the peak season for tourists.  Cameron had a conference in Las Vegas the week following Labor Day, to which I was going to accompany him to (without kids).  Basically, we took advantage of every opportunity we had to get away with using the least amount of PTO days.  I saw it as a challenge and we definitely won!
   We left Friday, August 31 for Utah where we would spend Labor Day with family and leave our children in the Grandparent's care while we continued on to Las Vegas.  Once the conference ended, the Grandparents and our children would meet us in Las Vegas and we would continue on (with grandparents) to the San Diego area for a week at the beach.  We would then slowly work our way up the California coast over the next week visiting Los Angeles, Monterey, Carmel, Santa Cruz, San Francisco, and Redwood National Park, then finish right back where we started. We had the time of our life!
   Once I mapped out our route I thought it would be interesting to see how many temples we would pass.  When I saw how many it was, I knew they had to be incorporated in our trip somehow.  A woman in our ward mentioned how they have their children stand in front of the temples they pass and get a picture taken regardless of the time of day (or night).  I took her idea and we did just that.  Our children were blessed to see and visit 20 temples on our vacation.  The vacation to which I now refer as "Temple Tour 2012".
  Stay posted to get a sneak peek into our adventures.  Pictures to follow!