Our Trip to California

This all started when we received an invitation to Jason's Grandpa's 80th birthday bash. We figured we had better just close our eyes and jump on that one.

Wednesday: We started our insanely quick trip that night by chowing down some Mac 'n Cheese as fast as we could go and jetting down to Utah to stay the night at my mom's house.

Thursday: It was Thanksgiving and I had wanted to be there for the entire day to help cook and stuff. Jason didn't have his typical football groupie team (ie. his brothers and dad) to watch football this year, but he did get to watch some and I even joined him on and off. That morning, my sister, Heather, and I had to run to the store for (of course) those few items that had been missed. My mom has this beast of a mixer machine that she pretty much only uses for making stuffing, that I've noticed. She puts on an attachment and grinds up sausage, celery, dried bread...etc.(stuffing stuff). Well, since she only gets this thing out like once a year, it's hard to remember how and which way all of the little parts go. So initially, when the kids were putting in the celery, all we got was celery juice. I guess the blade was backwards or something, but we grabbed some more celery at the store because all the celery she had was now a stringy, gushy mess. Now, having all the stuffing stuff ground up might sound a little weird or maybe even gross. But really, I love my mom's stuffing and haven't found anyone who makes it as good as she does. I was in charge of the potatoes and had grabbed some that had been plucked straight from Jason's family's potato cellar (can't get much more fresh than that). Now call me weird, but I actually like the mashed potatoes made out of the flakes better than the fresh ones...maybe it's because that's what I was used to growing up. But thankfully, Jason's dad (the potato farmer himself) still accepts that as a viable choice for mashed potatoes. He's told me that as long as they are Idaho potato flakes, I can still be part of the family. Anyway, I've gotten to the point where I'm smart enough to stop eating before I hit the uncomfortably full stage even though the food was fantastic. What made Thanksgiving even better this year was that my mom used Thanksgiving paper plates instead of getting out all the fine china and all that. I'm sure some can look down their noses at that because it makes the meal too casual or untraditional or what have you, but seriously it was great because there was half as many dishes to do. So we got to spend more time together doing what we want to do instead of stuck at the sink doing dishes....and isn't Thanksgiving about spending time with family? I thought it was awesome.

Friday: I arose at 5:45 on black Friday....no not to go get any good deals on shopping, but to get in the car and travel all day to California. (Not that I'm bitter, but if you're going to get up that early, you might as well catch a cool sale.) However, I ended up being kind of glad that I wasn't out in the chaos that is shopping on that day. In fact, I may have spared my life by doing so....some guy actually got trampled and killed by a crowd of crazed shoppers at a Walmart. That's just dumb that that happened...(I could spend a whole posting on how absolutely ludicrous that was.), but I won't get started on that. A little over an hour into the driving, Andrew decided to throw up all over himself. I was NOT going to California with the flu in tow, so we cleaned him up and I made a silent vow, that if he did it again in the next while, we were turning around and canceling the whole shindig. Luckily, he was fine the rest of the trip. I think it was the sippy cup of apple juice on an empty stomach that was the culprit. But really? Throwing up in the car on a road trip has got to rank way up there on things you don't ever, ever want to happen! Other than that, the drive down was rather uneventful (which is a good thing). We got to stay in a hotel near Jason's grandparent's home the first couple of nights because there was not enough room in the inn, I mean, their house.

Saturday: The birthday bash was Saturday evening and it was pretty cool. The decorations were out of this world and I really couldn't believe all of the work that was put into it. Wow. There were balloons tied to the back of about half of the hundred or so chairs around the tables in the cultural hall and the kids had a great time yanking down on the strings to get the balloons the fly down at them. At one point I had lost sight of Andrew, but could tell exactly where he was because every once in a while I'd see a balloon disappear toward the floor. We had a lot of fun.

Sunday: We went to sacrament meeting with Jason's grandparents and felt quite out of our element. It was completely quiet except for the person talking. It's an older ward with few (if any) kids. I kind of felt out of place without the constant underlying roar of hundreds of kids yapping, crying, whining...etc. as is the experience in our ward every Sunday. We went home after that because (obviously) their wasn't a nursery...and probably no primary either. We spent the rest of the day just chillin' with the grandparents. It was kind of nice to have some time to spend just them and us and have the kids get to know them a little better.

Here we are with Jason's grandparents

Monday: Early that morning, we headed out for Disneyland! The happiest place on earth! To our pleasant surprise, we were all happy for most of the day. (Which is saying a lot with a 4 year old and a toddler.) It was the perfect day to go. Most of the holiday travelers had gone home and/or back to work, so the park was busy, but manageable. There were a lot of rides that we could just walk on to and I think our longest wait was about 30 min. It was seriously ideal. Andrew was just mesmerized by all of it and Kate was completely loving it. They had put up all of their Christmas decor, so it made the park look really different from normal. They had even changed some of the rides to have a Christmas theme; like the haunted house was completely done over in The Nightmare Before Christmas. The It's A Small World ride was all Christmas-ed out and they were even singing Christmas songs along with the typical Small World song. The magic castle had been decked out with "snow and icicles". Sadly, the only picture we got of that was at night with the lights on and the picture was all blurry. (Yes, after getting home and seeing that, I promptly fired Jason from picture taking on vacations.) I think I was enjoying it all as much as the kids were. Kate went with Jason on Splash Mountain and just loved it...what a little daredevil. We had rented a stroller and at one point actually had it taken. We were in Toon Town toward the end of the day and went to tour Mickey's house and when we came out, the stroller was gone. What a downer! We didn't really have anything super valuable in it, but it still stunk that someone would take it. So we headed back toward the front of the park to find out what we should do. I decided I would scour the whole place to see if (by some miracle of a chance) I could find it...amongst the hundreds of rental strollers that looked just like it parked all over the place. But as we were passing a store at the entrance of Toon Town, I spotted what looked like our wipee container in a stroller. I thought, "That's stupid to think that could be ours because almost everyone with a stroller would need wipees!" But I took the trek out of the way and lo and behold it was, in fact, our stroller! I was just elated (not to mention that Jason's mood also improved rapidly as well, whew). Now I don't know if it was taken by accident or not. I really don't even care. I'm just glad that our day wasn't hampered by something as dumb as that. After that, we headed toward Tomorrowland. That's where they have the submarine ride and I think that one was Andrew's favorite...he was just glued to the window. They had incorporated Nemo into the ride so it was different from when I had last been on it, too. We got to see the tail end of the parade down Main Street (which was also done in a Christmas theme). It was getting close to the time for the park to close at 8 pm, but I hurried to take Kate on the Star Tours ride because, thanks to her dad, she's a Star Wars junkie. I thought she might get a little scared, but not a chance! She was sitting there telling the "driver" what to do. Now to those of you who really know Kate, I'm sure that doesn't come as a really big surprise. When we came out and met up with Jason and Drew, Kate went running up to him excitedly hollering, "Dad, you'll never believe it! I was in Star Wars!"

Kate & I are the tiny people in the middle in front of the tree...this tree was ginormous!

Kate got to visit Santa and even see his reindeer

This is in front of New Orleans Square...everything was decorated so beautifully
(Poor Andrew, he looks wasted)

It's A Small World display...they had lights all over this thing. It looked incredible at night.
(Once again, the night picture didn't turn out...yet another reason to fire my photographer)
I still love you, honey!

This was inside the Small World ride

Monday...(cont.): We hit the road after all was said and done at about 9ish and (I'll warn you now to NEVER, EVER do this) drove on to Las Vegas that night. We were just so exhausted from a day of wandering Disneyland...I really don't know what we were thinking when we planned that one, but we had purchased a room at a hotel ahead of time, so we were pretty much forced to execute our original plans. Thankfully, we made it there (mostly awake) around 1 am. Bleh!

Tuesday: That day we spent driving all the way back home. The kids were actually pretty good in the car, considering. Thank goodness for portable DVD players!

Wednesday: I spent all day just trying to get my life back to some semblance of normalcy. I'm wasted, but I had a great time and wouldn't trade it for the world.