Skip to main content

Rose Parade, Part 1

Image
By

I have a lot of pics from our California trip, so I'm going to break it out into several blog posts, otherwise, it'll be a bit overwhelming (for me) to have it all in one. Without further ado...off to Cali we go!

Day 1, Wednesday, December 28, 2022

We had some trickery getting out of Minnesota. Flights were delayed for weird reasons, which then delayed the rest of the plans for the day. We did end up heading over to Santa Monica Pier for a bit, while the band went south to Long Beach. It was gorgeous to see the sunset over the Pacific Ocean after a long day of travel.

G and I met up with my college roomie, Kristin, for dinner at the hotel. She brought us a bag of goodies (she's so wonderful!) and then we caught up over dinner. G and I hit the bed after that, and slept well. We were pooped!

See you later, Minny!



Hello, LA!


One of many motorcoach rides during the week...


Santa Monica Pier






Exploring Santa Monica



Stopping for hot chocolate!




Catching up with Kristin!


Here are Ava's adventures in Long Beach...also a gorgeous sunset!









Day 2, Thursday, December 29, 2022

On this day, G and I headed over to Disney California Adventure Park. We first stopped at Target to pick up a few supplies, and then meandered our way to the Disney center of madness. We didn't get there until later in the morning, so all of the Genie+ passes had been purchased for the day. Glad we learned a lesson (to get there early) on this day and not the day we went to Disney. Not having the Genie+ passes meant that we had to wait in some really long lines. But, we made the best of it and still had fun!

After many, many hours there, we headed back for dinner at the Red Robin next to the hotel, and then back to the hotel to hit the hay. Another successful, and exhausting, day!


We waited in line for 80+ minutes to go on the Soarin' Around the World ride. And it was worth it! We both loved flying around the world and seeing different highlights from all parts of the Earth. We especially liked how they infused scent into the ride...we smelled grass over the elephants running through Africa, flowers over the Taj Mahal, and coconuts over Fiji. SO fun!



Pixar Pier


Needed to refuel!




Ariel's Undersea Adventure



Pixar Pal-A-Round (so many screams coming from a Ferris wheel with sliding gondolas!)



Jumpin' Jellyfish


Yummy churros!




Finally having dinner...



Ava and the band headed over to Costa Mesa High School and rehearsed for Bandfest and the Rose Parade all morning. They then went to Beverly Hills and Hollywood, and spent the evening in Santa Monica.






And here are a few shots from the last few weeks. We've been very busy enjoying some planned time off this week, but also really focused at school and work when we were there. Ava had her first high school band concert on Tuesday night and it went well. She has excellent posture...the hundreds of marching band hours have improved her skills immensely!

Hibachi dinner out with the fam last weekend


Being silly



Ava and G had fun roller skating last week, thanks to a PTO-sponsored night for G's school!


Can't wait to see what the upcoming week holds...hopefully some more downtime!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Goodbye Sweet Spanky

By
This is a post that I'm not very excited to write.  As you probably know, our oldest dog, Spanky, had struggled with health issues (ear infections, seizures) his whole life, and recently, his health had severely deteriorated.  He hadn't been eating, his ear infection was so severe his face was swollen, he had a hard time getting up the stairs, and he very rarely wanted to play.  Last week we got a few tail wags from him, and he ate a few bowls of food, but it was a 50-50 chance that he would actually keep the food down. On Thursday, we made the decision that if he wasn't any better by this weekend, we were going to put him down.  I know Scott didn't want to make that decision as Spanky was a very special dog to him - he truly was his little buddy, following him around everywhere, wanting to be wherever Scott was, and howling his sadness whenever Scott would leave him. Throughout Friday night, it became clear that Spanky wasn't going to have a miraculous recovery...
2 comments
Read more

Happily Ever After?

By
Lately, I've been adding to the Disney Princess movies in our collection.  Last week I bought Beauty and the Beast for Ava.  That was never a favorite movie of mine, but now that I've seen it several times in the last week, it's growing on me.  I figure this is a good chance for me to catch up on some of the stories that I missed out on! Watching all of these princess movies has me thinking about fairy tales...why is it that it's always the evil stepMOTHER?  Or the mom is dead, and no one has taken her place?  Very rarely is it the father who is evil, or dead.  This has actually come up as a topic in more than one conversation lately, and has me a bit intrigued.  Fairy tales are often not very happy - and usually someone dies at some point.  I was a giving an overview of Snow White to a friend of mine, and as I was going through the story, both of us were horrified at the message - mom dies, evil stepmother wants to murder her pretty stepdaugh...
3 comments
Read more

26 Hours in a Day

By
Just yesterday morning, I was thinking to myself that I could really use a few more hours each day.  We don't sleep a whole lot, both work long hours at our jobs, try to play with Ava as much as we can at night and on the weekends, and then we have to do all of the adult-stuff...paying bills, grocery shopping, cleaning, work on side jobs, house projects, etc.  If there were only 26 hours in a day, we could: *Sleep just an extra 30 minutes - we need it since the dogs have been waking us up each weekend day at 5:30am.  What could be SO urgent that they need to get us up then?!?  You'd think we only feed them once a week, or something. *Spend an extra hour with Ava...we could go to the park every night, take an extra long bath, read a few extra stories, and just enjoy the giggles and chattiness. *Take 30 minutes to talk to each other about how things are going.  With Scott leaving for work each day before 5am, and then all of the craziness that ensues wh...
4 comments
Read more