The next 4 days - Monday 28th to Friday 1st - were a bit of a blur - but all thoroughly enjoyable - it started with a delightful breakfast pancake at the Ojai Emporium restaurant, where we all filled up with a good ol' US breakfast. That seemed to tee the whole lot of us up for the rest of the day, so after a visit to the park and shops, we went back to the house and just enjoyed ourselves for the rest of the day.

The day finished with a youth sleepover - or at least that was the plan - the team moved all the mattresses into the guest house, carefully planned and drawn up by Siena and Charlie, and so with an optimistic head and a light heart - and a glass of wine - we attempted to get them all to sleep. It nearly worked. The end result was most of the kids sleeping in the hot house with Alan on the sofa as one or more of our kids seemed to have abandoned hope of sleeping and crept into our bed! Ah well. At least colin and sarah had a peaceful night!

The next day we had an early start for all as we headed off to the 6 flags magic mountain/hurrican harbor amusement park - wow. I'd heard of magic mountain but when you see it from the highway it's jaw-droppingly amazing. We're not big fans of roller coasters (expect that to change as el ninos grow) but whatever your opinion, they are awesome, huge and scary from 200 metres away!

We'd elected to visit Hurricane Harbour, the adjacent water park, so we were expecting something more like alton towers or center parcs, but we got something quite different - first off we had a ride of a different sort, when the car started rocking after we all got out - quickly we realized we were in the midst of an earthquake, so colin (who has studied this widely!) advised us all to stay clear of the cars!. Standing where we were in the middle of the car park we had a good view as the whole area rippled and shook - it was very exciting, perhaps we should have been a little more worried, but as an adrenaline rush it was cool! Apparently it was 5.2 on the quakeometer scale, no major damage anywherebut quite a large one nonetheless. The aftereffect was a weird silence - not because of any seismic influence, but because they shut all the rides so the air was devoid of screaming and rolling metal/wood constructions. Clearly they had to test all the rides after the quake, and some of them took along time to reopen. Not sure what happened to everyone who was in the long queues !

So we eventually got into the park, already warmed up to an exciting day. It took us a while to get oriented, as the locker/tube/pool system was a little confusing, and because we had to rush from shadow to shadow as the floor was screamingly hot! Finally we found a place for 10 of us to park, just on front of the main pool.Curiously they shut this pool every hour for 15 minutes, for no evident reason. Perhaps it was for the lifeguards to rest their bobbing heads - their scans of the pool were weird and it was hard to see how their rapid up and down head movements could actually see anything and they must get a little dizzy doing that for a longtime. Anyway, once the buzzer went again the kids could race into the big waves in their tubes, and they all had a cracking time.

The grown ups were feeling a little sore as we seemed to be charged for everything -lockers (tiny ones at that), tubes, food, drinks, I'm surprised they didn't try to charge us for staring at nice bikinis. Or maybe I just wasn't spotted - actually it was full of large Americans so the bikinis may have been nice but much of their contents weren't!

The rides themselves were quite unlike what we expected. We hadn't anticipated such long queues for very short rides - this was very much a roller coaster park with water - so the rides were big and dramatic, with vertical drops, huge funnels and long tunnels, but the wait was really crazy - for one ride we waited over ¾ of an hour - and at the beginning Colin - o saintly patient one - waited all that time only for Izzy to decide she didn't want to go on the ride !!

The waits were exacerbated by the approach of the staff - who seemed to think that the longer the wait, the better (perhaps it made you thirstier or hungrier so you'd spend more - or kept the pool empty for their mates) - but it was quite extraordinary how they would calmly walk up and down the end of the rides a couple of times before pressing the button alerting their colleague at the top, which rudely awoke them so they could saunter to the waiting gate, take their time to unlock it and ask if anyone wanted a ride… incredible, and highly frustrating of you're in the queue.

Still, we had a great time, we finished off the evening at a nice roadside restaurant where the food was mostly seafood and spanish, and had a good end to the day. The earth had moved!

As if that excitement wasn't enough, the next morning had more adrenaline in store for the boys. More water, but this time it was salty, wavy and full of neoprene. Yup, it was surfing lessons for Charlie, Matt, Finn and Alan. After a quick stop at the surf shop for gear, (how come the girls got all the gear when it was the boys doing all the work?).

We felt a little silly lying and standing on our boards while still on the beach with Jim, our coach, but a short while later we were to realize it was our finest moment! We had a couple of hours of attempts at getting up on the boards, and the 3 shorter ones were quite successful - particularly Charlie who had it sorted - I reckon being shorter is a huge advantage, since I was fine getting up as far as my knees!

We had a blast, and thoroughly enjoyed it - towards the end the youngsters were taking their time to swim back out to Jim - I didn't have the same problem, and I was backwards and forwards tirelessly demonstrating my higher levels of fitness and commitment…until I realised it was because I wasn't going anywhere, and they were surfing all the way in to the shore!!

We spent the next few hours on the beach. Colin had brought his throne down to sit in authority laughing at us, and we enjoyed takeaway pizza for lunch while the kids were in and out of the water all day. Derry put on a wetsuit and we couldn't get her out of it, even though she only went 2 meters into the water. Still, it saved on the sunblock. And at these temperatures and clear skies that's a blessing!

As the afternoon went on, we decided that we'd take up the opportunity of a swim at Santa Barbara swim club. So after a bit of faffing backwards and forwards hunting for Finn's swim gear, we headed off and made it with minutes to spare. We'd been hoping for a decent workout for the kids and then for us later in the week. Mmm, we were about to be disappointed.

The pool was OK, open air of course, short course, a school pool which was closed for the summer except for the swim club's use, so everything was locked including the loos and changing rooms! Anyway, as swimmers that wasn't a problem, we're used to being naked, but that was just the start. Their head coach had been seconded to the US team in Beijing, and most/all of the other coaches were absent, which meant that there were just a few volunteers and older swimmers taking the session, and a total mish mash of swimmers - it seemed this was a novice try out session too so our kids, ready on the pool side, felt a bit out of sorts as we all tried to work out what was going on. Just shows how organised Leamington is!

Eventually Finn had waited long enough so he just piled in and started warming up. Siena held back naturally and eventually was given a job helping some junior swimmers with their turns, but she was barely briefed and it turned out they thought she was a senior swimmer from the club! Finally the swimming started, and both of them were surprisingly in great condition. Both of them had heeded our advice to concentrate on technique as they rebuilt their fitness, and they looked great. Finn struggled a little with indiscipline and a little resentment of an outsider overtaking the regulars, so he got out a little early, but Siena improved as we watched and ended up leading the lane!

So we'd made a session at a decent US club. We had every intention of swimming with them regularly, but we were less than impressed with their summer schedule, or at least this day, so sadly this was the last we saw of them. Still, we'd achieved one of our aims!

Now that we'd exhausted the kids we felt justified in rewarding them (even Derry who'd nearly gone in - and would have beaten most of their 9 year olds) so with limited options we bought a subway and baskin&robbins for tea - eaten in reverse order naturally, to avoid melting, and in the car as we drove, so a full on Linton experience!

Luckily for us when we got back, sarah and colin hadn't changed their routine so we were able to relax outside with a glass or two under the stars, with the kids safely tucked away. We'd had a good day.