Big Bear

What a fun vacation! It was a great mix of relaxing and exploring, just like our family likes. Our boys love the outdoors, but neither Aaron nor I are too interested in camping. So a cabin in the woods is perfect. The kids could explore and we still had a full kitchen, bathroom and tv! At night we played games, watched movies and ate plenty of junk food.

We took a feeding tour at the Moonridge Zoo. Colin liked the red fox's the best because they ran around like wild while they waited for dinner!

The Discovery Center was a great free stop. There were many hands on activities for the kids; pelts to touch, animal tracks to print in sand and a piece of a very large tree that is labeled with events from the past.

A local park provided the kids a place to run off after dinner energy a few nights.

Hiking is always a favorite for our family. And now that Colin and Finn are getting older they can hold their own on a hike even longer. Id didn't hurt that we stopped to play at every pile of rocks!

A pricey stop was the Alpine slide, but it was so much fun! You ride a chairlift to to the top of a hill and ride in a toboggan a 1/4 mile traversing down. The first day Colin was not on board at all! You could hear him screaming from the bottom. But the second time we went he decided it was fun! The biggest surprise was Finn who wanted to go faster and faster!

Who knew a museum would entertain our kids so much! They all agree the school house was their favorite!

We saved panning for gold last at the museum, every kid came home with a vial of fool's gold!

A relaxing way to spend a few evenings was walking the boardwalk. And the promise of skipping stones never hurts with our boys.

For our last day we rented a pontoon boat and cruised the lake. That boat could move and the kids enjoyed taking the wheel for a turn. The weather was beautiful! And here is where Colin could not get enough of the speed!

There were of course a few moments that were less fun than others. Like when Aaron realized that I had completely deleted ALL the photos we had taken. But being the good sport he is we just retraced our steps and did it all again! So if you notice we wore the same clothes a lot, it is because we were reliving the fun a 2nd time for a few of the events. Other lows of the trip were the rain on our pizza picnic (no biggie, we just ate fast and climbed back in the car!) and Colin's tantrum at lunch as we were leaving our trip. But he was just overtired and was asleep in no time. And now 24 hours later, the laundry from our 5 day trip is almost done, well being washed. Folding may take a few weeks for me to finish!