Christmas Vacation 2014

On December 11th Christian went with his scout troop to the senior center. They sang to the grandparents and brought cookies.

Buddy had made his cookies with my mom while I was chaperoning Faith's Honors English field trip to watch Scrooge at Hale Center Theater the day before.

It turned out that Tony was so jealous of my visit to Disneyland, that he planned a last minute family vacation and only told the kids the day before. Even though Faith felt sick the morning of the 14th, she powered through and got on the plane.

We found a great deal on a motel, Park Vue Inn, on the Hotel Tonight app. It's where hotels offer last minute deals to fill up the rooms that would otherwise be left empty. We dumped our DelSol reservations and only paid $89 per night. This place even had parking and hot breakfast included.

We checked into the motel and headed over to Disneyland to pick up our passes. We had gotten tickets after Tony wrote an email after our last visit because so many of the biggest and best rides were closed, including Indiana Jones which Christian was so looking forward to because he was finally tall enough. Much to our surprise, they offered us free two-day park hopper passes, each.

At the ticket booth, Tony asked how much it would be to purchase a third day, and they said it was impossible to add to free passes. When the employee punched it into the computer, he said "Whoops, I clicked the wrong button and accidentally gave you three-day passes. But if you tell anyone , I'll deny it ;)"

It was late afternoon by this point, so we rushed out to Huntington Beach just in time to enjoy the beach and a spectacular sunset.

We ate dinner at Souplantation again, but this time Buddy filled up on dinner and could only got one ice cream cone.

On the 15th we spent the day at Disneyland.

We split some Monte Cristos for lunch and Faith felt pretty good until early evening. We headed back a bit earlier than we hoped, but figured she would feel better by morning after a good rest.

Unfortunately, she felt worse :( We spent the 16th in the hotel room and took her to see a doctor at an after hours clinic. She had an asthma attack while there and said she couldn't breathe, but her oxygen level was high. They couldn't find anything wrong with her since the urinalysis and strep tests came up clear, and figured it was just a stomach virus.

She felt a bit better on December 17th, so we spent time at both California Adventure and Disneyland.

Christian had, of course, found something at every souvenir shop along the way that he just had to have and we told him that he could keep all these things in mind and select something at the end with his money. He was particularly desperate when he saw a bubble gun just outside of the little mermaid ride. He started bawling and throwing a fit, and just as we were starting to exit the store, the clerk asked if he could just give Christian one! Obviously, not a great thing for correcting his behavior, but he was sure thrilled with it. Not only was it super fun, it was a Disneyland miracle!!

We all shared a giant smoked turkey leg for lunch that day. Faith kept having episodes of not feeling well, so we would sit on a bench or trade off taking her back to the hotel room to rest.

The 18th was similar in that Baby didn't feel great, but still had some fun at the parks. That evening, the kids picked their souvenirs with the money given to them by their grandparents and Tammy. Faith chose this gorgeous hoodie with silver glitter park attractions,

and Buddy chose this magic set from the magic store on Main Street. At first we tried to steer him towards something that had Mickey or a Disney icon on it, but he really loves magic and ended up enjoying and getting really good at the tricks for this set!

We also had to get our traditional fancy caramel apples :)

December 20th was the last day of our trip, so we got ready and headed to the airport. Unfortunately, there were not enough seats on the flight for us to get a ride home. 

We drove around and finally found a beach which didn't have scary looking homeless drug addicts wandering around it, and it just so happened to be a dog beach where pets could be off leash. It was fun playing on the beach and also watching all of the dogs splashing in the surf and playing in the sand.

Went back to the airport and tried to make the next flight, but bad luck struck again. We ended up having to drive the rental car home, which was extra bad because Faith started feeling worse :(

Even though the traffic was practically at a standstill up to Vegas due to being a Friday late afternoon/evening, after that we made good time and got home by early the next morning.

Beginning of December 2014

On December 3rd Faith had a benefit choir concert at Clearfield High. My mom and dad came, as well as Tammy and Lana. Eric bought two tickets to support the choir, and as a bonus didn't have to come ;)

On the 4th I sent out on a venture with my friends! I flew standby with Brandi and Kim to Long Beach airport. Darcy and Jenn had flown in the day before with Darcy's mom. They were a bit late picking us up from the airport, and we got extra silly texting them rude things about not being there for us.

We stopped by Panera Bread for a delicious lunch of soup, sandwiches and/or salads.

Our condo in Oceanside was in a gorgeous complex and had this amazing view of the beach from the back balcony!

We jumped in the rental car to check out the town and get some groceries. Somehow, we drove for hours and stopped by two organic food markets before we got to a regular grocery store!

We ate dinner at a little Mexican restaurant in a strip mall. We prepared ourselves for a long drive back, and were shocked to find that we were only a few minutes away from our condo. We must have been going in circles!

We ended up getting some non-alcoholic Chardonnay from Trader Joes, so while we had an exciting evening of playing Phase 10, we got our drink on!




Who says you need real booze to have fun and get silly?

We had not planned in advance what activity we would do the next day. We discovered around midnight that night that both Kenn & Kim were both secretly hoping to go to Disneyland! I was the lone holdout (due to cost) so it was decided that we were Disney bound.

On the 5th we woke up bright and early to drive back up north. It was nearly $100 for a one day, one park pass, so we made the most of it!!

Crazy faces for the coaster cams!

We thought we were so funny when we planked in front of the castle and Facebooked the photo to share with the rest of our Riot class. The other park attendees looked like they thought it more crazy than funny!

I had a beef skewer from Adventureland (because I'm super cheap and had already far exceeded my budget), but the rest of the group had Monte Cristo sandwiches and garlic pomme frites. Some of them had never tried the Monte Cristo before!

Fun on the Jungle Cruise.

A highlight was dancing like loonies in the Tiki Room! Also, when we did the single rider line at the Indiana Jones ride, we apologized to a gentleman for acting like lunatics and explained we were giddy from being away from our kids for a much needed break. He said, "That's okay. I thought you had just spent the day drinking too much at California Adventure."

We got to enjoy the "snow" after the fireworks.

We certainly did get our money's worth. We had a blast and stayed so late that we closed that park down!

The morning of the 6th, we all piled in the King sized bed upstairs to hang out for a bit. When the kids saw this pic, they asked, why didn't you get a place with more than one bed?!"

Actually, just Jenn and Darcy slept upstairs in this bed. The downstairs bedroom had two queen beds, Brandi and I shared one and Kim had the other. The only thing we didn't like was splitting our group between two floors.

That day I made omelets for breakfast and then we walked out to the beach and explored.

Darcy and I walked the long pier barefoot.

That night was the reason for our trip (supposedly, anyway), the Electric Run at the DelMar Fairgrounds.

Tons of people commented on our awesome shirts. We'd ordered them online, they were sound activated and lit up like music equalizer bars.

I thought we did great! It was only 5K and we didn't run the entire way, but we passed tons of people who were walking or slow jogging. The altitude made my lungs feel like I could run all day!

More than running, we acted crazy and took tons of pictures :)

There was a dance party at the finish line and we rocked it!!

Ent back to the pier afterward and ate dinner at Ruby's. I had delicious ice water since I wasn't hungry.

On the 7th we had to come back to reality.


We had such an amazing time!!


That evening at mom & dad's, Tony got to hold a sleepy Evie 💜

December 9th was Bunco at Jenn's house and she had the cutest hot chocolate bar!

The 13th was the kids' Christmas piano recital at Layton library. They both did amazing jobs!