Vacation Day 2…Dance Lessons and Swimming

After waking up this morning the girls were treated to an introduction to ballet. My aunt Nancy has been dancing since she was little and teaching ballet for many years. When I was growing up she was in the Colorado Ballet, and we went down to see her dance one year. So in her home she has a ballet room with hardwood and a ballet bar. She had little ballet slippers for the girls and put on a little class for them. Cody was in there for about 2 min before he lost interest.She taught them first position with their feet…..And then their arms….Then they did a little stretching exercise. Alex was funny, kind of doing her own thing and watching rather than participating.
(videos to follow later as they won't upload on the road)

My aunt has taken many trips to Italy and has written a book about her travels and I think some of our family history from there. She took the time to show Amy and me around her home and tell us all about where she picked up different things in her home. We got to this statue of David and she explained that she had covered him up since the kids were coming. I thought the “outfit” was hysterical. He looks more like Tarzan now.The kids were in the pool from 9am to when we left that afternoon at 2pm. Here they are taking a hiatus from swimming. They decided they wanted to paint. I had picked up some things to keep them busy at the dollar store and these paint sets were a score. They came with two cardboard pictures to paint and then a set of paints. They LOVED them.Cody has turned into a little Michelangelo.Jon manned this position for most of the day catching the kids while they jumped off the wall. Way to go Dad-e-o!

My cousin Kathy came back over for lunch and to hang out for a bit before we left and Nancy treated us all to California Pizza Kitchen. Yummy! Here is my sister Amy, Nancy and me.

We left Palm Desert at about 2:30 and drove down to San Diego. Most of the kids slept on the way down, but what an ugly drive. Not what I think of when I think of California. It was mostly winding roads through desert-ish mountains with no trees. When we got to San Diego it was probably only mid 60s which was a huge switch from mid 90s out in Palm Desert so we all changed back into our pants and hit the Olive Garden for dinner. Jon and I ended up picking up a navigation system at Best Buy on the way out of LA since the rental car company wanted to charge us 10 bucks a day for one, we figured we might as well spend a little extra and take it home with us afterwards. So far it has turned out to be super helpful. It even found us an array of places to eat this evening that were close to the hotel. Isn’t technology cool? We came back to the hotel and the kids were all past out by 8:30 and we are raring to go and spend a full day at Sea World tomorrow!