Alright already!!

So it has been brought to my attention that my blog is out of date and I need to be more on top of posting regularly. In my defense I did just spend a week in California and couldn't interrupt my time with Mickey and Minnie to post on my blog. But I promise I will get back into the habit of posting again.

So I'll start by talking about California. It was totally FUN!! It all started Saturday April 26, 2008 at 7:00 a.m. (ish, we were a little late getting started). Paul and I picked up Kylie and got our first glimpse at our suitcase loading challenge. See we took Paul's PT Cruiser that has a big speaker in the back. More to come on this. Then we hustled to Orem to pick up Karri and her 6 bags of homebaked (from frozen Otis Spunkmeyer dough) chocolate chip cookies. Now the challenge was to get all our luggage into the car. We finally figured out that we could put Kylie's suitcase on top of the speaker, Karri's would fit in front as long as we held it up a little while we closed the back and then shove it down into place and mine fit on top of Karri's once we removed the head rest and shoved it in from the back seat. All in all it worked out fine. We stopped in St. George to have lunch with our friend Kyle. And arrived at our hotel around 7:00 p.m. California time. After checking in we walked to a near by restaurant that was kind of like a Chili's in that they had lots of variety. Then we hung out in the pool for a little while before heading to bed.

Sunday was a long day of running around Disneyland riding rides, taking pictures and eating at our favorite places. (Pasta from the Pizza Port is so yummy!!) We camped out for about an hour waiting for the fireworks. Totally worth it for Paul to see Tinkerbell fly. Then we wandered over and watch the 2nd showing of Fantasmic. The best part of that was listening to the announcer guy say "Fantasmic" in Spanish. Totally hilarious!! We finally called it quits around 11:30 and started wandering out of the park but not before stopping at a few stores to buy some gifts and souvenirs.

Monday we started with the plan to get in line for the new Finding Nemo ride before the line got too long. Kylie really wanted to make sure that we rode Splash Mountain so she and Paul went to get fastpasses while Karri and I got in line for Finding Nemo but they weren't giving out fastpasses. We did eventually make it over to Splash Mountain and got SOAKED!! I'm pretty sure that there were people hiding in the dark throwing buckets of water on people as the came down the big hill. We also got lucky enough to win special "Year of a Million Dreams" passes that allowed us to stay in the park an extra hour after it closed. We finally made it over to California Adventures and got to introduce Paul to all the cool rides. We took him on Tower of Terror and I thought about warning him about what was going to happen before but then I decided it would be way more fun to just let him experience it for himself and enjoy his reaction. And enjoy his reaction we did. He FREAKED!! He screamed the whole time. It was AWESOME!! The best part of California Adventures was that Paul just kept saying this is awesome. He was really impressed with the whole park. We headed back over to Disneyland so we could enjoy our extra hour in the park. We were told to meet back at the Big Thunder Ranch and were escorted back into the Festival Arena. I had been to the Festival Arena before during my Sophomore year of high school while on choir tour. We competed in a singing competition in Anaheim and even got to perform at Disneyland. The awards ceremony was hosted at the Festival Arean so it was cool to relive some memories from the past and to see Karri's, Kylie's and Paul's reaction to the huge hidden arena. They kept us in the arena for about half an hour before letting us loose on the park. We got to ride 4 rides in an hour if I remember right. We hit Dumbo, Storybook Land, Peter Pan, and Matterhorn.

Tuesday we spent the first part of the day in California Adventure's. Early on in the day Karri spotted the Dream Sqaud handing out Magical fastpasses. We were excited to win again. We only had to redeem one fastpass tab for California Screamin'. The line was crazy long and we wanted to make sure Paul got to ride it. Then later that day we were enjoying taking pictures with our PhotoPass and a really crazy photographer. Right after we finished taking pictures Karri spotted the Dream Squad again and this time they were handing out Dream Ears!! We all hurried over and were delighted to have won a 3rd time!! Karri is the best Dream Squad spotter ever!!

I think the best part of our time at Disneyland was getting Paul involved in pin trading. Karri, Kylie and I are all totally obsessed already. This year Karri came prepared with pins she had purchased on Ebay for like a buck a piece. I think she had like 30 or something. She was extremely nice and let all of us trade her pins away if we found something we liked. I actually think she traded the fewest for herself. But we did finally completed a set for her of the princesses in jewels. They are really pretty and I'm glad we found all six. It came down to trading in the last hour to find the last one but we did it.

Wednesday we drove up to Valencia and visited Six Flags Magic Mountain. It was so cool!! Kylie and I had never been there before and we were totally excited to get on some BIG rollercoasters. Paul and Karri were excellent tour guides. The craziest part of the day was the fact that there were no lines. We just walked right on to some rides. And a couple of times we didn't even have to leave the loading platform before we boarded the next car. It was awesome!! I almost died early on in the day. We had just ridden a ride called Scream. And there was no line so we got off and got right back on. I was all locked in when all of a sudden my shoulder harness releases. I kinda start freaking out mildly trying to get the attention of one of the ride operators and no one responded. Then all of a sudden we start moving. My shoulder restraint still isn't locked so now I really start freaking out. Oh and did I mention that Paul and Kylie are totally laughing the whole time. I'm almost in tears at this point. As we start climbing the big first hill I realize that it finally locked and I'm not going to play the starring role in my own version of Final Destination 3. Don't worry that I had a nightmare about this for the next 2 nights. Kylie and I found out that we aren't cut out for so many big time rollercoasters all jammed in together. I truly enjoyed being flipped all over on the rides but by the end of the day I was ready to hurl. And I think Kylie was worse than I was. I even bought her a t-shirt that says, "Putting the ILL in thrill rides." It's pretty awesome.

So in a large nutshell that was our trip. Hopefully the length of this post will hold my readers over until I post again. After all size does matter.